


Cold Nights

by Ginipig



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Angst, Angst about sexy times, F/M, Romance, Sexy Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:02:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 59,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5605990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginipig/pseuds/Ginipig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Carlos Ramirez expected on his one-night trip to Chicago was to run into an old acquaintance with a new job. Just seeing Molly Carpenter again dredged up all kinds of unwelcome, latent feelings.</p><p>Before she was off-limits. Now she was out of his league.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ye be warned: Here thar be spoilers through Skin Game.
> 
> I wrote this for a friend of mine who loves Dresden (and got me into it!) who was having a bad day. She loves Molly, and Carlos is my boy, and we both very much wanted them to get together. I was more than a little disappointed by the end of Cold Days for many, many reasons, one of which was that it seemed to preclude Molly and Carlos from getting together. This story is me figuring out a way it could still work out. It was originally intended to be a short one-shot, but the characters decided it needed to be expanded :)

“Wait a minute.” Carlos Ramirez stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And he was a wizard of the White Council. A God-damned Warden. He’d seen some pretty crazy things.

Harry Dresden, black duster billowing behind him, continued walking down the dark, abandoned sidewalk of the suburban neighborhood for a few steps before he realized Carlos wasn’t with him. He turned and rolled his eyes.

“Don’t,” he said, dragging out the word, “be all melodramatic and Spanish about it.”

“Are you telling me —”

“Or do,” Harry grumbled. “You know, whatever feels right.”

“— that you touched one of _the_ thirty pieces of silver. Like, the original ones. That belonged to Judas.”

Harry sighed. “Yes.”

“And it held a fallen angel.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which got transferred into your brain like a photocopy.”

“Yep.”

“And when we were in the Deeps fighting the White Court bastards and their back-up” — Carlos shuddered. Six years later, he still had nightmares about those giant, indestructible ghouls and their creepy-crawly blood — “that photocopy —”

“Image,” Harry corrected.

“That image sacrificed itself —”

“Herself.”

Carlos threw him an impatient look.

“Hey,” Harry said, throwing his hands up in surrender. “If you’re going to be melodramatic about it, at least get it right.”

“So this … _image_ sacrificed _her_ self to get you out of the Malvora’s mind whammy.”

“Yep.”

“Which destroyed it — her.”

“Exactly.”

“But unbeknownst to you until a few months ago, that self-sacrifice was an intimate act of love, and like some sort of weird sex, it created a mind-baby that was going to burst out of your head like Athena out of Zeus, and the current Winter Lady had to do some mind-juju so it didn’t kill you.”

Harry threw his hands up and said, in the most horrible British accent Carlos had ever heard, “By God, I think he’s got it!”

Carlos blinked, jaw agape.

Harry dropped his arms and sighed. “You’re not done yet.”

“Harry, you just told me that you and an image of a fallen angel from a coin had a _mind-baby_. How in the hell am I supposed to react?”

“I don’t know, man. That’s why I got a ton of Mac’s ale into you before I told you. And don’t call her a mind-baby. She’s a spirit of intellect.”

Carlos shook his head. “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Harry turned around and continued walking down the sidewalk. “What, were you too busy looking at yourself in the mirror to pay attention in class that day?”

The man’s stride was over a yard long, and Carlos had to jog to catch up. “Don’t be an ass. I know what a spirit of intellect is, but that doesn’t explain anything. I’ve never seen one before. Neither had my mentor. They’re stuff of myths, man. And I thought they were all ancient. I’ve never heard of one being _created_.”

Harry slowed his pace a bit and seemed to deflate. “You and me both.” Then he stopped so abruptly Carlos almost ran into him. “We’re here.”

Carlos looked up to see a little town home with pink roses in front. It looked like a place an old woman would live. But he had been here once before, several years earlier, when the Archive had been rescued from followers of the same fallen angels they'd just been discussing. It was Karrin Murphy’s place.

“Why did you wait until we were almost here to tell me that?”

Harry started up the walk. “I thought it might head off some of the melodrama.”

Carlos grinned. “Nice try.”

“Yeah.”

They stopped on the stoop. Harry turned to him. “Listen, I told you that as a friend, not as a Warden or even a member of the White Council. They’re not too crazy about spirits of intellect flying around.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Carlos mumbled. Freaking _Kemmler_ had had access to a spirit of intellect before it was destroyed by the Wardens.

“Just —” Harry looked away, fumbling with a key he’d pulled out of his pocket. “I don’t want anything to happen to her. She’s …”

“Your kid,” Carlos said quietly. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. Not that anyone would believe me if I told them.”

Harry snorted. “Good point. The total batshit insanity is on my side.”

“So what’s her name?” Carlos asked as Harry unlocked the door.

“She hasn’t chosen one yet.”

“Can I meet her?”

“Nope.”

“Afraid she’ll succumb to my roguish charm and devilishly good looks?”

“She’s a spirit of _intellect_ , Carlos. You’re not even on her radar.”

“Aw, come on, Dresden —”

Both men froze in the doorway. Karrin Murphy sat on a couch in her living room. She was a short, unassuming blond woman who scared the shit out of Carlos. The woman had taken on countless supernatural baddies, including a loup-garou, Black Court vamps, Red Court vamps, White Court vamps, the Fomor, and several fallen angels. And _won_. She regularly trained against dead heroes of Valhalla, and she’d actually wielded — successfully — one of the Swords of the Cross. Capital _C_.

And right now she sat on her couch, drinking a cup of tea with one of the Faerie Queens.

And they were _laughing_.

“… so I finish the whole spiel and he says, ‘Hang on, Murph. What the hell is a Google?’”

Molly Carpenter burst into giggles and fell onto her side, gasping, “But you said that —”

“At the beginning!” both women said in unison, bursting into more laughter.

“One of the most powerful wizards in the world, and Google is a mystery to him,” Karrin said with a shake of her head.

Harry cleared his throat loudly.

“Oh shut up, Dresden,” Karrin said. “We see you there.” She stood as Molly’s giggles started to subside. “Carlos, it’s good to see you again.”

The youngest Faerie Queen made a hiccuping noise and stood up abruptly, suddenly assuming a formality that seemed foreign on her.

“Warden Ramirez,” she said with a sober nod. “Harry,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

He hadn’t seen her in years. Not since before the Red Court died. He hardly recognized her. She looked so … Sidhe. She’d always had a Goth-y, bad-girl vibe — dyed hair, piercings all over, torn shirts, short skirts, fishnets with holes in them. Just what the good little Catholic boy in him had always found attractive.

Now, her hair was long and white-blond, and her clothes looked like they belonged to some rich white person in Hollywood trying to “blend in” with the commoners: designer jeans purposely faded, a far too tight — yes, he noticed, he was a virgin, not dead — blue t-shirt with the Chicago Cubs logo on it, and sandals. In January.

Winter Lady, he reminded himself. Not that he could have really forgotten. The air fairly thrummed with power, and Harry Dresden dropped down to the third scariest person in the room.

But damn, she was gorgeous. And while there was a definite Sidhe air about her, the beauty was hers. It had always been there, just hidden under layers of dark, heavy make-up and brightly-colored hair. Now she looked elegant and … confident. She held herself differently. And she looked, if not happy, at least not homeless or crazy or murder-y, as the rumors had said she’d become in the years since Harry Dresden died.

Heart pounding, he gave a deep, formal bow. “Lady Winter.”

Her eyes flashed with something, but it was too fast for him to catch.

Harry snorted. “Suck-up,” he muttered, then, more loudly, “Don’t expect me to bow. I’m off the clock.”

And the Winter Knight continued into the house, plopped himself down on the small, doily-covered couch, which made him look even more giant than he already was, and propped stockinged feet on the glass coffee table.

Karrin, who now stood between Carlos and the couch, gave Harry a level look.

Harry grinned.

Karrin didn’t move.

Harry winced. “Aw, come on, Murph, you know I can’t fit on this munchkin couch. This is the only way I can stretch out.”

Karrin didn’t even blink.

“Fine.” Harry gave a heavy, almost adolescent-grade sigh. “You little people will never understand my pain.”

“My house, my rules,” Karrin said, walking past the couch toward the kitchen. “If you have a problem with it, go stay in your Winter Knight palace with the giant bed and the ice and the inhumanly beautiful women throwing themselves at you …”

“Now, now, Ms. Murphy,” Harry said, standing up and pulling her into his arms. “You know I only date women who could kill me before I even realized it was happening.”

Karrin raised an eyebrow. “And those women can’t?”

“Nope. I’d realize it was happening. Couldn’t stop it, but I’d realize it.”

He winked, and Karrin flushed pink and _giggled_. Like a little girl.

Carlos looked at Molly, who met his gaze and looked like she was trying hard not to smile. That made him start to smile, which caused her smile to grow. His stomach fluttered, and something in his chest grew warm.

Then he felt the tug of the beginning of a soulgaze, and they both broke eye contact.

He looked down, embarrassed at his idiocy — he knew better than that. But he couldn’t help it. Her smile was so contagious.

He started to grin, until he saw his pants.

They were bulging more than was natural. Or explainable in polite company.

He closed his eyes and started saying Hail Marys in his head. It worked. Best boner killer ever.

And probably part of why he was still a virgin.

He opened his eyes again. Harry and Karrin were still flirting.

Molly was looking at the floor, eyes closed, lips moving wordlessly. He wondered if she was saying Hail Marys, too.

He couldn’t help but notice that she was breathing more quickly, her ample chest rising and falling in an unsteady rhythm.

And she was flushed.

Winter indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to rate the story before people started to read it (sneaky, I know), but I feel it would be unfair not to say that there will be some rather explicit sex in later chapters. But I also felt that rating EXPLICIT!! was also a bit unfair, since it's much more about the characters and their relationship than sex. So this is my disclaimer.


	2. Chapter 2

“Carlos, come in and sit,” Karrin said, startling Carlos from his reverie. She extracted herself — a bit regretfully, he noticed — from Harry’s embrace. “But boots off. I don’t want snow tracked all over.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Carlos said with a grin. “And I come bearing gifts.”

From the pockets of his winter jacket he pulled two small packages.

“This one first,” he said, handing her the lighter one as he took off his boots.

She raised an eyebrow. “Gifts? You know that’s not required, right?”

Harry, walking to the kitchen, called over his shoulder, “Suck-up.”

Karrin opened the box to reveal a small number of Swiss chocolates.

“Ooh,” she very nearly squealed, popping one into her mouth. “What else?” she asked, mouth full.

Harry had returned from the kitchen with four beers. “Greedy, aren’t we?”

“Shut up, Dresden, I’m being presented with gifts.”

Carlos handed her the second, much heavier package. It was wrapped in bright red paper, leftover from Christmas, and tied with a large green bow. Karrin ripped it open.

“A grenade! I love it!” She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug — boner gone, crisis averted — and he tried not to wince as the constant dull ache in his back spiked to a sharp point.

“Hells bells, like she needs more of those,” Harry muttered.

“Considering that the last time I carried some, I saved your ass,” Karrin said with a saccharine smile, “I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you.”

Harry shook his head and turned his gaze to Molly, who had been standing during the entire exchange, looking like she couldn’t decide whether to sit or flee.

“Are you here for me?” he asked with a small frown.

“Get over yourself.” Molly rolled her eyes and finally made the decision to sit in a comfy-looking chair near the couch.

Carlos took a seat in a similar one opposite her, on the other side of the coffee table, and grabbed a beer.

“Molly and I meet sometimes to talk and catch up,” Karrin said. “Updates on the B.F.S. ...”

“My training,” said Molly.

“Butters’s training,” added Karrin.

“How small your penis is —”

Carlos did a spit-take into his bottle.

“Wha —” Harry sputtered. “It’s not —” He suddenly rounded on Carlos. “And you’re one to talk, virgin!”

The room fell dead silent, and Carlos felt his cheeks grow hot.

Laugh it off. Just laugh it off.

But that was something so personal, he’d never been able to laugh it off. Not even with Harry.

Everyone was staring, eyes wide — Molly’s in some sort of surprise, Karrin’s in a glare directed at Harry, and Harry’s in what looked to be guilt. They gave each other crap like that all the time, but never in front of people. It must have slipped out.

Carlos’s face was practically on fire now. His dropped his gaze to his beer bottle and fiddled with the label. It was too late. No matter what he said, they’d know it was a lie.

Then everyone start to speak at once.

“Dresden!”

“Ramirez, I —”

“Harry poured ice water on me when I was naked!”

Molly’s voice rang out above the rest, and Carlos looked up sharply. He wasn’t the only one. Everyone’s eyes were wide again. One of Molly’s hands flew to her mouth. Karrin was barely holding in a laugh — had she heard the story before?

Harry’s eyes looked like they might shoot from his sockets any second. “I did — it’s not — you are taking that completely out of context!”

“Ice water, Harry?” Karrin said. “Even for you, that’s —”

“Cold?” Carlos offered.

Karrin valiantly kept her laugh to a polite snicker.

His mind was whirring. What exactly _was_ the context? Why in the name of all that was holy would Harry do that to his apprentice? He’d figured they’d slept together, in spite of Harry’s insistence that he would _never_ , but why would Molly offer that up willingly right now? To help him save face in light of the virgin comment?

Molly shrugged, her eyes sparkling like icicles in starlight. “The cold never bothered me anyway.”

Karrin threw her head back and finally loosed her laugh. She had a great one.

But that wasn’t what made Carlos grin.

“Ha,” Harry said without humor. “Haha. Cold. Hilarious.”

“Come on, Dresden,” Carlos said. “Don’t you think you should just let it go?”

Karrin doubled over in more laughter, and Molly rewarded Carlos with a smile as bright as a clear, snow-covered morning.

“Let it go?” Harry said indignantly. “ _She’s_ the one who’s not — Oh.” Realization dawned on his face, anger evaporating, followed immediately by a single-syllable chuckle. “I get it. Like the movie. Maggie loves that one.”

“Then how do you not know it by heart yet?” Molly asked.

“Maybe because we can’t make it past the first ten minutes without your family’s television blipping out? None of my suppression spells seem to work around her.” Harry gave an almost sheepish smile. “She keeps telling me to stop staring at her.” He frowned, suddenly more vulnerable than Carlos had ever seen him. “Oh God, she probably thinks I’m creepy. Because I just tower over her and I’m loud and sometimes I watch her sleep —”

“Harry,” Karrin said, placing a hand on his arm.

Harry stopped at her touch and let out a short breath. “Panicking again?”

Her smile was soft and comforting. “Yeah.”

Carlos and Molly exchanged another glance — shorter this time, but somehow more intimate. Carlos was still getting used to Harry Dresden: Dad, but the man was nailing it. He obviously loved his daughter — he’d spent a good chunk of their dinner at Mac’s showing Carlos picture after picture of the adorable kid.

But as happy and proud as he was of his friend, when he saw Harry’s excitement and insecurity, and Karrin’s quiet and loving understanding, something in Carlos’s chest ached. It was empty and lonely. Dark and frigidly cold.

From the look he shared with Molly, it was clear she felt the same way.

“So, Molls,” Harry said.

Molly broke their gaze and turned to Harry, her cheeks slightly pink. “Hmm?”

“Apparently you already told Karrin” — he shot the woman a gentle glare — “but I’d also like to know how things are going. We haven’t talked in a while.”

The two took over the conversation, and Carlos watched as Molly relaxed for the first time since he’d walked in. She animatedly told them about some of her more exciting lessons, and Harry commiserated with her about Mab’s insane idea of “training.” When she laughed, her long, white-blond hair shimmered like freshly fallen snow, and Carlos’s heart sped up.

Dammit. Before she was off-limits. Now she was out of his league.

“Speaking of not talking in a while.”

Karrin, speaking _sotto voce_ so as not to interrupt the main conversation, once again snapped Carlos out of his impossible fantasies.

“How have you been, Carlos?” she asked.

“Well, you know.” He forced a grin he didn’t feel and leaned back in his chair. His attempt to look relaxed tweaked his back, but he didn’t let it show. “Single-handedly saving L.A. from the Fomor by day, and by night —” He looked around as if to see if anyone was listening and said in a dramatic whisper, “I put on a mask and cape and a big black hat and do the same thing, only they call me Zorro because I speak Spanish and my sword-fighting skills are brilliant.”

Molly snickered. When Carlos looked at her, she was pressing her lips together as though trying not to laugh and nodding eagerly at Harry’s story. Her eyes flicked to him briefly, then back to Harry.

He smiled, and his stomach did a flip. She was interested in what he had to say. And she thought he was funny.

At least someone did.

Karrin, as always, looked unimpressed. She never pretended to laugh at his ridiculous claims or even mustered an eye-roll at his false bravado. It was like she always expected him to tell the truth. How the hell was he supposed to do that and still stay sane after everything he’d seen and done? That cocky grin was the only thing he had some days, and it was getting harder and harder to keep up.

The worst part was, she gave him the same look his _abuela_ did when she knew he was lying.

Nope. Boner-killing Hail Marys were enough reflexive guilt for today.

He turned his grin up to eleven.

“Uh-huh,” Karrin said flatly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you — would you like some ice for your back?”

His smile faltered, but he took a swig of beer to cover it up. “Nah, I’ve had enough talk of ice and cold tonight. And —”

“Because I thought you might be a bit sore, getting back to your cape-flapping, crime-fighting duties after being out of action for eight months.”

He rolled his eyes and took another couple swigs. “The rumors of my injury have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Oh? I heard you cracked three vertebrae.”

He shrugged and emptied his bottle. “Hairline fractures. No biggie.”

“You tensed when I hugged you.”

“I wasn’t expecting it.”

“A Warden of the White Council, a combat expert, didn’t see a hug coming?”

“Oh, sure, all those Fomor are throwing _hugs_ at me, but it’s okay, because then we get into pillow fights and have tea parties after and it’s all just sunshine and rainbows —”

“Is that how the fourth vertebra got cracked so badly they had to put six screws in?”

“What exactly is your point?” he snapped.

“My point is,” she said softly. “Would you like some ice for your back?”

Her voice was so gentle that it made his throat sting. He covered it up with his trademark cocky grin.

“I’d like another beer, if that’s all right.”

“Of course.”

 _Now_ she faked a smile. And somehow that was scarier than the _Abuela_ look.

“Another beer?” she asked Harry and Molly.

“Is that even a question?” Harry said.

Molly politely shook her head. “No, thanks.”

Harry picked up where he’d left off, dramatically recounting one of his recent adventures. If he’d heard Karrin and Carlos’s exchange, he didn’t show it.

Molly had, though. She kept nodding and laughing at Harry’s story, but shot Carlos furtive glances once in a while.

He rolled his empty bottle back and forth between his fingers.

The Wardens had kept the full extent of his injuries from getting out so that the Fomor wouldn’t think he — and the people in L.A. he was fighting to protect — were now easy-pickings. But in reality, he’d been hospitalized for two months, during which his subordinate Wardens took turns coming to L.A. to keep an eye on things, followed by six months of intense physical therapy. Listens-to-Wind told him every time he visited for check-ups that he was lucky he hadn’t been paralyzed. The old wizard assured Carlos that eventually the pain would fade and he’d be back to a hundred percent, but even a wizard’s body would take decades to heal an injury of that magnitude. Harry’s hand had taken years to become moderately functional, and that injury was minor by comparison. So Carlos took the potions Listens-to-Wind showed him how to make and tried to focus the pain away.

He’d only been back in action for about a year, but it was one of the worst of his life. The pain made everything ten times more difficult, and at the end of each day he felt a hundred times more tired. He wasn’t sure how that math worked out; he just knew that he started each day more and more exhausted. This trip to Chicago had been a gift, a brief jaunt to the eye of the incessant storm he hadn’t been aware was constantly bombarding him. He dreaded coming out on the other side; this one wouldn’t pass any time soon.

Karrin returned with the beers and placed an ice pack on the arm of his chair.

_Madre de Dios._

He sighed. “Are you Catholic by any chance?”

“With a name like Murphy?” Karrin raised her head proudly. “Twelve years at Our Lady of Good Counsel, plus kindergarten. And that was when the nuns used rulers. You?”

“Our Lady of Guadalupe,” he said. “K to twelve.”

He knew from experience that continuing to fight the guilt would only end in failure. So he grabbed the ice pack, and she watched while he gingerly placed the it between his back and the chair. He tried, he really did, to keep up his cocky grin, to not allow his eyes to roll back into his head in ecstasy as the chill seeped into his muscles, numbing the ever-present ache to a fraction of what it normally was. It was heavenly.

Karrin’s look told him that she, as usual, saw right through him.

“The nuns I had didn’t use rulers.” He could hear the caustic edge that had crept into his voice over the past months – another side effect of the pain – dull slightly. “Mostly they just used the art of the guilt trip. But they never got around to teaching me their ways.”

He gave her a genuine, grateful smile. That was the worst part about the guilt. In the end, you _thanked_ them for it.

“It’s a gift,” she said smugly.

They clinked their beers and drank.

She swallowed and frowned thoughtfully. “So how’s everything else?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Everything else?”

“You know, like your personal life.”

“Oh, that old thing?” So she wanted to dance again. That was fine; he took the lead this time. “It’s great. When I’m not helping my _abuela_ make _gorditas_ for the restaurant or babysitting my little nieces while they sing along to _Frozen_ for the thousandth time, I have ladies lining up to date me. The White Council and the Fomor were kind enough to get together and agree to give me one night off a week so I can have dinner or see a movie. There are a few close contenders, too, like the nurse who finally succeeded in not killing me after two months of dealing with heart monitors that kept going berserk, or my physical therapist who decided I was just too hilarious when I tried to explain how I was injured.”

Karrin watched him with the falsely patient look of a woman who knew her partner was going to step on her toes, but refused to let it ruin her enjoyment of the dance.

He wondered if he stepped on her toes hard enough, she’d give up and dance with Harry instead.

So he poured it on extra thick. “But my mom and _abuela_ ’s favorite is this beautiful Latina from a good family who teaches poor children how to read and is a good Catholic and doesn’t do heathen things” — he waved his hands like he was telling a ghost story — “like believe in magic or carry a stick with Satanic carvings or draw pentagrams that are clearly meant to worship _El Diablo_ and couldn’t possibly be intended to protect them from all kinds of supernatural baddies that might try to hurt them.”

He sucked in a deep breath.

Whoa. That one had gotten away from him. So much so that his punchline — “Oh, she’s also imaginary” — fell flat on its face and drew only stares from everyone in the room. Harry and Molly had stopped talking to listen to his outburst, because of course they had.

Just perfect.

He summoned his cocky grin again.

Karrin’s stare was different from the others’. Her eyes softened from that faux-patience to a gentle understanding. “That’s what I thought,” she said quietly. “Can I give you some advice, Carlos?”

He felt his grin grow brittle. “Only if you promise to be really condescending about it.”

She smiled with a real patience this time. “I used to be on the fast track, too. Joined the force right out of high school, worked as a beat cop for barely a year before I was selected for more training. I’d go far, they told me. Youngest woman in the city of Chicago to be promoted to detective. First woman to be appointed head of S.I. when I pissed off some bigwigs who made sexist remarks. Lieutenant and head of a department by thirty.”

Carlos swallowed. It was impossible not to see the parallels. He’d been hand-picked right out of his apprenticeship to join the Wardens. Luccio made sure he’d been appointed to the Council almost as an afterthought; that was how badly they’d needed people in the war against the Red Court. A few big fights, miraculously surviving when hundreds more experienced Wardens hadn’t, and he was on the front lines against Kemmler’s disciples. More brilliant luck, and he was the only Warden left standing out of a group that had included Captain Anastasia Luccio and Donald Morgan. So he got to ride a dinosaur with Harry Dresden and killed one of the disciples, suffered two dislocated shoulders and several broken ribs, and bam, he was appointed the youngest regional commander in the history of the Wardens. It was like a dream come true, and he loved it.

Until he started to realize that the better he did, the more responsibility they gave him — and the less thanks he got for it. In the beginning, Luccio or Morgan would call him once a week to see how he was doing. Now he was lucky to get a “Sorry you almost got paralyzed” card.

He’d seen more in his short life than a lot of wizards had seen in centuries. The slowly fading cocky grin and decreasingly witty comments barely kept him sane anymore.

And Karrin was lecturing him about his God-damned personal life?

“You know what it got me, Carlos?”

He forced the grin to stay in place, but he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone anymore. Harry looked guilty — big surprise. That was pretty much the guy’s default mode nowadays.

Molly was rolling her own bottle between her fingers. But Karrin’s eyes were still filled with that patient understanding.

“Well, let’s see,” Carlos said, his tone acidic. He ticked things off on his fingers. “It got you the unofficial position of Head of the Brighter Future Society, a reputation as the most bad-ass vanilla mortal not signed onto the Accords, a chance to wield one of the Swords of the Cross, and the opportunity to fuck the Knight of the Winter Court of the Sidhe?”

She smiled, still patient. The fucking woman had toes of steel, apparently.

“Now, yeah,” she said. “But in between? Twenty years of fourteen-hour days, canceled family plans, and sleeping in the office, two failed marriages, and when my job went up in smoke I was completely lost.” Her smile turned sad. “I’m not going to say it was wasted time because it got me to where I am today. But there are certainly things I’d do differently.” Her eyes flicked back to Harry for just a moment, and she said, with an almost lecherous smirk, “Like fuck the Winter Knight a hell of a lot earlier. Maybe back when he was just a P.I. in the phone book under ‘Wizard.’”

He snorted. Harry smiled slightly, but his eyes still drowned in guilt.

“Cut it out with the guilt complex, Dresden,” Karrin said without turning around. “My life, my choice.”

Harry shook his head, but he smirked, too.

That aching emptiness in Carlos’s chest throbbed cold again. He wished he had someone who knew him that well.

He risked a glance at Molly. Her knuckles were white, and she was scraping patterns in the heavy frost that now covered her bottle.

Karrin leaned toward him and stage-whispered, “You have to make time, Carlos.” Her gaze flicked to Molly and back.

The bottom of his stomach dropped out. Jesus, was he that transparent?

“It’s not that easy,” he muttered, and his voice came out a little rough. “I’ve got —”

“People counting on you.” Karrin nodded, leaning back against the couch and putting her stockinged feet on the coffee table.

Harry’s eyes narrowed, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

It made Carlos smile a little.

“Of course it’s not easy,” she said, turning back to him. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t take a brilliant, handsome, skilled wizard like you to do it.”

And she grinned at him. Not a cocky one, like his, and not her earlier patient smile, or a worried, guilt-inducing one like _Abuela_ ’s. It was a real, happy smile. She’d earned it.

She raised her beer. “To doing the hard thing.”

Carlos snorted, and Harry burst out laughing.

Karrin sighed heavily and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Children. Both of you.”

“You walked right into that one, Murph.”

Molly stood. “I should be going.” She put her now completely frozen bottle on the coffee table with a loud thunk. “Mab will be expecting me soon.”

Carlos looked at the clock. “I’d better get out of here, too. Takes several hours to get back to L.A.”

Harry frowned. “You’re going now? Even using the Ways it’s a long trip. Stay the night.”

“Absolutely.” Karrin nodded.

“I can take you home,” said Molly. When everyone turned to look at her, she wiggled her fingers dramatically. “New magical Sidhe powers? I can open Ways better, faster, and more accurately than any of you losers can.”

She looked pointedly at Harry, who rolled his eyes. “You’ll never let me live it down, will you?”

“That I’m your boss now? Never.”

“Can you really open Ways like that?” Karrin asked.

“Sure,” said Molly. “I could open one right here that would send Carlos right to his front stoop, but I wouldn’t want to get L.A. all over your carpet.”

“Of course not,” Karrin deadpanned. “Who wants warm weather in January?”

“We could walk a little ways down the street to find someplace no one would see us,” Molly said.

Carlos tried to ignore the significant glance Harry and Karrin exchanged, but it was made more difficult when Molly flushed.

“I mean — so they wouldn’t see the Way — not _us_ ,” she said hurriedly. “Not that being seen with you is a bad thing — or that I wouldn’t _want_ to be seen with you — I just meant that —”

“Grasshopper,” Harry said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Cool it.”

Karrin sighed and rolled her eyes. “You were the one annoyed with the cold puns earlier.”

“Only because I wasn’t the one making them.”

Carlos looked and Molly, shrugged, and said, “Just let it go.”

She laughed, and it was music to his ears. His heart pounded, and his chest — and, er, a bit lower, too — started to heat up again.

“Damn,” Harry grumbled. “Yours was better.”

Carlos grinned. “I’m brilliant as well as skilled. And handsome.”

“And oh so humble,” said Harry.

“I’m the humblest person I know.”

Molly snickered.

Karrin gave her a hug, and Carlos could tell she was whispering in Molly’s ear. But he didn’t see Molly’s reaction because Harry came up to shake his hand.

“Good to see you. Let’s do this again soon.” Then he dropped his voice. “I’m sorry about earlier, with the —”

“Forget it.”

“It just kind of slipped out.”

“I know,” Carlos said with a shrug. “It’s no big deal.”

Harry cocked an eyebrow. “Listen, Carlos, if you need help with anything, you know you can call me anytime, right? I’ll be out there before you can get on your mask and cape and big black hat.”

So he had been listening. Because of course he had.

But Harry had a kid now. Two kids, if you counted the mind-ba — spirit of intellect. Carlos would never take him up on his offer.

“Definitely,” Carlos said with a grin. “But only if you bring your dinosaur.”

Harry rewarded the comment with a smile, but it was clear he was no longer buying Carlos’s act, if he ever had. “I’m serious. Take care of yourself. And listen to Murphy. She’s always right.”

“It’s true,” Karrin said, coming up behind Harry. “And he would know, because he’s always wrong.”

Karrin embraced him, but much more gently than she had the first time. She rubbed his upper back and whispered, “Be careful out there, okay? I worry about you.”

It had been a long time since someone had held him like that. And he’d never been held like that by someone who understood what he was going through. He squeezed his arms tight around her and had to close his eyes to keep a couple tears from escaping.

“Yeah,” he said into her shoulder.

“Remember what I said,” she said as she pulled away. “And call me if you need any help. I’ll be there with bells on. And grenades. And lots of back-up.”

 _That_ offer was one he might take.

“My kind of girl,” he said, putting on his boots. “You got a twin sister?”

“Are you ready to go?” Molly said. Her voice was a notch louder and higher-pitched than normal.

“Yeah,” he said, stretching out the word. Why was she so eager to leave?

“Is that the only coat you brought?” Harry asked as Carlos shrugged into his jacket. “You look like Nanook of the North.”

“Because it’s Chicago in January.”

“It’s not that cold, Ramirez.”

Karrin stepped in. “How about everyone who isn’t associated with Winter be quiet about how cold it is?” She gave Carlos a once-over. “Really, though, it’s only like forty-five degrees out.”

“The words ‘only’ and ‘forty-five degrees’ do not belong in the same sentence,” Carlos grumbled. “I grew up in L.A. And I’m walking down the block. I think I’ll be fine.”

“Right,” Harry said. He and Karrin exchanged another glance. “You two kids have fun. Be safe out there!”

“Thanks, Dad,” said Carlos.

Harry’s eyes lit up. “Hey, did I tell you that Maggie called me ‘Dad’ for the first time the other day?”

“Only about fifteen times,” Carlos said with a smile. He shook Harry’s hand again. “Watch your ass, Dresden.”

“I’d tell you to watch yours,” Harry said, in their customary goodbye, “but I know you do that enough already.”

“With an ass like that, who wouldn’t?” Karrin murmured to Molly, who flushed.

“Really?” Harry asked her.

Carlos just grinned.

“Let’s go.” Molly stared at the carpet as she made a beeline for the door.

Carlos opened it and gave an exaggerated bow. “After you, M’Lady.”

Molly paused, like she was trying to figure out if he was mocking her or not. For the record, he wasn’t. She didn’t quite seem to make up her mind, though, and swept out the door, leaving a trail of frost on the floor behind her.

Heart pounding for a reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint, Carlos gave Karrin and Harry a lazy salute and one final cocky grin, took a deep breath, and plunged into the cold Chicago night after the Lady of the Winter Court of the Sidhe.


	3. Chapter 3

Molly was at the sidewalk when Carlos closed the door, and past the next house down by the time he finally caught up with her.

He had to jog for several steps, tweaking his back in the process. He allowed himself a full wince until he fell into step with her. Then he put on his game face.

His game face was different from his cocky grin. While he used the grin to disarm and relax people, including himself, his game face was how he conveyed _I am a Warden, and I will kick your ass for blinking at me_ to everyone around him. Including himself. But mostly to his enemies.

And he was putting on his game face while walking home — or rather, being walked home by — the Winter Lady.

“Women are not the enemy, Carlos,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” Molly asked.

She didn’t have a jacket, and she walked in the slush — forty-five degrees was still freezing, he didn’t care what Chicago or science had to say — in sandals. And yet she was flushed and seemed to be a out of breath.

“Nothing.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “So, uh, that’s weird, huh?”

“What, Harry and Karrin?” Definitely breathless, and her voice was oddly pitched. “I guess, but it’s been in the works for ages. They just kept fighting it. Which is stupid, because they’re obviously perfect for each other.”

She started to speed up, and though she was only a few inches taller than him, her stride seemed to be feet longer. He struggled to match it, and soon he was breathing heavily. He hated himself for it; he was barely exerting himself, but his back made everything more difficult.

It didn’t help that as she walked faster, she froze the slush on the sidewalk. He successfully dodged several big patches, but even his Warden combat reflexes weren’t enough to warn him when the entire section he stood on suddenly transformed into ice as smooth as glass.

He managed to catch himself before he fell, but the sharp pain that shot through his back elicited a Spanish word from him that would have made his _abuela_ wash his mouth out with soap.

Molly saw him slip, but rather than reach out to steady him as most people would have done, she sucked in a breath and took a step backward.

“Sorry,” she murmured, her face turned away.

“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. The pain whetted the edge in his voice so that he spat rather than spoke the word.

They stood on the cold, icy sidewalk in silence for several moments. Carlos panted, desperately grasping for focus to force the pain from his mind. Molly faced away from him, shoulders hunched, hugging herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just so … difficult to be around you.”

The words hit him like a punch in the gut.

“Oh.” The single syllable cracked as it came out, as loud and clear as the sound of a frozen lake thawing in the spring.

He didn’t know why it hurt so much. Maybe because he didn’t have many people left around him anymore. Or maybe because Karrin’s talk had gotten his hopes up for something that would obviously never happen — Molly didn’t even want to be near him.

“I’ll make my own way home, then.” His voice was numb, the bow he gave her more brittle than an icicle. “It was nice see you, Lady Winter.”

Then he spun on his heel and walked as quickly as he could down the sidewalk.

“Wait,” she called after him.

He didn’t.

“Carlos.”

That froze him in his tracks. She had never called him that. Ever. Not even before. It was always Warden Ramirez or Warden, even when they were sort of kind of flirting.

Then again, he thought bitterly, she did outrank him now.

She caught up to him. “I didn’t mean — It’s not like that.”

He forced his voice into cool politeness. “Like what? You don’t owe me anything, Lady.”

She grimaced. “Will you stop with that? It’s me. I’m just Molly.”

“And I’m just tired and want to go home.” He sighed the whole sentence, and only realized at the end how pathetic it sounded.

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and started to walk again, eyes stinging. Why had he been so stupid? It was just supposed to be a quick night out with Harry to blow off steam. But when he’d seen her, and Karrin had given him that speech, he’d let himself get suckered into old thoughts, old hopes, old fantasies. Delusions. What, like they were going to walk down the street and then the freaking Winter Lady would just throw herself at him? The only woman who’d ever remotely done that was a succubus, and that was only so she could steal his life force while having sex with him. He was pretty sure that didn’t count.

“It’s because I can feel it,” Molly said, following him.

“Feel what?” He didn’t even slow his step.

“Your pain.”

“What?” He spun to face her so quickly that he wrenched his back again.

He winced, and so did she.

She backed away a few steps. “I’ve always been sensitive. To other people’s emotions.” At her sides, her hands clenched and unclenched in a nervous gesture. “And it got really bad after Chichén Itzá. Really bad.”

She shook her hands out — he could have sworn he saw little flecks of ice fly off them — and rubbed them hard on her jeans. Her breathing sped up.

“And now that I have the mantle of the Winter Lady, things are confusing. Sometimes I don’t feel anything, and sometimes I feel … everything.”

Her voice broke, and Carlos understood. She wasn’t feeling his physical pain, at least not literally. But she was feeling everything emotional around the pain — the exhaustion, the stress, the sadness, the loneliness, the anger, everything that had made the last year horrible. And for all he knew, she was feeling it on a larger scale than he was.

He was hurting her.

It was his turn to step back. His pain was his. It was horrible. He wouldn’t have wished it on his worst enemy.

He had always hated hurting people, whether the weapons were swords or words or sticks and stones, on the playground or at home or on the battlefield. He wasn’t magically sensitive; he just didn’t like seeing other people in pain. He’d joined the Wardens, not in order to hurt the bad guys, but to protect people. To keep them safe from harm. Sure, he liked the adrenaline rush of battle, and yes, he used magic and swords and guns and grenades, but those were side effects and tools. They weren’t the reason he fought.

And now, without wanting, without trying, without knowing, he was hurting another person. Just by _being_. And not just anyone — Molly. If that wasn’t the death knell of his delusional fantasy, he didn’t know what was. His insides twisted into knots, and the empty loneliness in his chest threatened to overwhelm him.

“No, Carlos,” Molly whimpered, eyes welling with tears. “Don’t feel that way.”

_Dios_ , the longer he stood there wallowing, the more he was hurting her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll — I’ll go. I can find my own way home.”

“No!” She made a noise, an almost animalistic roar. “I don’t want you to go, I just want it to stop!” She gripped her head in both hands and rocked back and forth. “Please don’t go. I just need to — Don’t go!” she suddenly shouted.

“Okay!” He threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not going. I’m standing right here.”

His heart pounded with adrenaline. She was scaring the shit out of him, and he had no real weapons. It was a friendly visit, so he’d brought a couple of small focuses and a few knives, but not his staff or his gun. If he needed to defend himself from her — regardless of whether she intended to hurt him or he wanted to hurt her — he wasn’t sure he’d be able to.

He reached into his coat pocket and grabbed the most powerful focus he had with him — his rosary. His _abuela_ put it in his pocket every day, even though he never used it or went to Mass or prayed at all anymore; hell, he wasn’t even sure if he still believed in God. But whenever he took it out, she put it back, so instead of constantly worrying about losing it, he’d decided to kill two birds with one stone and make it into a focus. If she ever found out that he’d turned a sacred object — blessed by the pope, she always reminded him — into a focus for his “unholy” magic, she’d probably have a heart attack. But right now he was thanking God she’d made him carry it.

And he was fully aware of the layers upon layers of irony in that.

Molly’s eyes were closed, her face screwed in immense concentration. A circle of frost surrounded her, slowly expanding away from her in all directions. He debated calling Harry and Karrin. They weren’t that far down the street, but he was worried that any sudden sounds or movements might set her off. He was even afraid to gather will for a spell, since he didn’t know if she’d be able to sense it.

They stood that way for several minutes — Molly, muttering to herself with increasing frequency and volume, surrounded by Winter, and Carlos, frozen in fear, indecision, and awe.

At some point, she seemed to reverse whatever was happening because the circle of Winter started to decrease in radius until it finally disappeared, as though reabsorbed into her, with a small pop. She sucked in a sharp breath as it did, and her eyes snapped open.

She sighed in relief and said, “There. Better.”

Carlos gaped at her.

She took a step toward him.

That was when he gathered his will, but he didn’t release it. Just held it there, hidden behind his game face.

_Women are not the enemy, Carlos._

Unless they happen to be queens of Faerie.

“It’s okay,” she said. Her tone was the one people use with scared animals. Or crazy people. “It’s under control for now. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

“I don’t want to bargain,” he said.

She jerked back as though he’d slapped her. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t —” She looked away. “Mab says it will take time for me to adjust,” she said softly. “Until then, my magic and sensitivity will be swinging back and forth between mortal and Sidhe like a giant pendulum. But the things that make the Fae the Fae, like bargaining or telling the truth, will happen gradually.”

“That,” Carlos said, “is really fucked up.”

Molly gave a sad little sigh. “Yes. And it’s scary as hell. Like PMS, but all the time, and with the ability to literally kill people. I have to be really careful around my mom.”

She smiled weakly at her own joke. Carlos didn’t.

“I don’t have to bargain,” she said. “And I can definitely tell lies.”

“Prove it,” he said, clutching his rosary-focus tight.

“Okay.” She thought for a moment, then smirked. “I didn’t agree with Karrin when she said you had a nice ass.”

It took him a moment to register what that meant. His heart skipped a few beats.

“Doesn’t count,” he said. “That’s like saying, ‘The sky is blue.’ Technically not a lie, but only because it’s a fact.”

She laughed, and his heart sped up. “Good. If you’re cracking jokes, you’re calming down.”

“Not true,” he said, voice steady and eyes never leaving her. “My ass is smartest when I’m scared out of my fucking mind.”

“False,” she said, matching his tone. “That’s Harry. _Your_ metaphorical ass is smartest when you’re one notch below scared out of your fucking mind. When you’re really scared, you get all aloof and serious and look like you could murder someone.”

He dropped the will he’d gathered along with his facade. “How do you know about my game face?”

She snickered and seemed to have to force herself to stop. “You call it your game face?”

His heavy sigh was partly for show. The other part was annoyed he was that obvious. “Well, not anymore. Clearly I need a new one.”

He let go of the rosary but kept his hands in his pockets. She was right. He was relaxing.

She smiled. “I’m going to walk toward you now. Please don’t try to blow my face off.”

“How would I do that?” he asked as she took a slow step. “I don’t even have my staff.”

“Right,” she said, taking another. “Because you would come to a different city completely unarmed. How very responsible, Warden.”

He shrugged, and she moved another step closer. His heart started to beat double-time.

“I haven’t been back in action for too long,” he said. “Maybe I’m off my game.”

“Or maybe,” she said, closing the distance between them, “you have a focus in your pocket.”

Damn. She was good. Then again, she’d trained under Harry Dresden and then the Leanansidhe even before she’d become the Winter Lady.

She reached out a hand toward his abdomen. He grabbed her wrist, but as he pulled his hand from his pocket, his sleeve caught on his rosary, which fell to the sidewalk.

Cursing his stupidity, he snapped, “What are you doing?”

But she’d seen the rosary hit the sidewalk and bent to pick it up. “Is that a rosary?”

He jerked her wrist upward and stepped on the rosary, dragging it back towards him with his foot.

She didn’t seem to care that he had her by the wrist. Her eyes widened. “Is the rosary your focus?” She brought her free hand up to cover her mouth. “My mother would murder you.”

“So would my _abuela_ ,” he said smoothly. “So let’s make a pact not to tell either of them, on pain of my death. Now —”

He squeezed her wrist slightly; not enough to be painful, but enough to grab her attention.

“— why don’t you tell me why you tried to touch me, even though you supposedly promised not to hurt me?”

Her eyebrows knitted into a frown; she looked hurt. “I did promise not to hurt you, and I won’t. Ever. I was trying to help you.”

He snorted.

Her frown deepened. “You’re so cynical now. You used to be kinder. More trusting.”

“Not true. I was always this cynical. I’m just getting worse at hiding it.”

She shook her head. “False. You used to have hope. You don’t anymore.”

He managed not to wince as the words sliced into his heart, and he only proved her point by laughing coldly and saying, “Hope just leads to more disappointment.”

Hope for acceptance, for peace, for happiness — all disappointments.

“So much pain,” she whispered, and the beautiful sadness on her face took his breath away. She reached out to touch his cheek.

In the second it took him to decide how to react, she wrenched her wrist from his grip and thrust her hand under his jacket, beneath his shirt, and rested it on the bare skin of his back.

A shiver shot through him, and suddenly the pain in his back was gone. Not dulled or numbed. Completely gone. Like someone had flipped a switch.

His closed his eyes and a moan of ecstasy escaped him, unlike any he’d ever uttered, even in the locked bathroom as a teenager.

“Easy, there, tiger.” He could hear the smirk in her voice. “We wouldn’t want the neighbors to hear us.”

“How are you doing that?” he gasped, opening his eyes.

She smiled, and he’d never seen anything so beautiful. “Mab used a similar magic to keep Harry’s pain at bay while he worked on her last mission. I asked her to teach me.” She frowned. “Unfortunately, I don’t know how long it will last.”

His breaths were coming quickly, and his heart was pounding. He hadn’t felt this amazing since … well, ever. Not only was he no longer in pain, but he felt fully rested — more than fully rested. Like he could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Or kick all the fucking Fomor from his town without even breaking a sweat.

And to top it off, she was touching him — intimately. Her cool, soft hand rested on his bare skin, and her face was so close that, if he moved an inch forward, their lips would meet. He shivered again, and his skin broke out into goosebumps.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He laughed. “Are you kidding? I feel like a million bucks.”

Her smile was so bright he almost had to turn away, but there was a sadness in it. “I’m afraid it’s only temporary. You’ll feel it tenfold when it comes back. I don’t even know if I can take my hand away.”

“Then don’t.” He felt giddy, almost drunk. And before he even realized what he was doing, he turned so they were facing the same direction and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. To any bystander, they’d look like a couple walking down the sidewalk. “Just keep it there, and when we get to a good spot, open a Way and shove me through it before I have time to think about it.”

She stiffened for a moment, and when she moved, he thought she was pulling away. He braced himself for the wave of pain to come rushing back. But instead, careful not to move her hand from him, she bent down and picked up his rosary, which he’d forgotten in light of her touch and all the things it made him feel — and not feel.

She started to walk again, her hand on his back, his arm around her shoulders, examining his rosary. “You carved a rune into every single bead? It must have taken you ages. They’re glass. How did you do it?”

“Very carefully and very secretly,” he said with a wink.

She caressed the beads, and he imagined those long, slender fingers trailing down his chest, his belly, his —

“It’s lovely work,” she said, handing the rosary back to him.

He swallowed and took it, placing it in his pocket once again. “Thanks. And thank you for —”

His gaze moved to where her arm met his back. Even though some of his bare skin was exposed to the cold air, he felt almost feverish.

“Are you sure this is kosher?” he asked. “I mean, if I need to give you something, I can —”

“Of course it’s okay,” she said hastily, waving a dismissive hand. Then she added, softly, “Does your family believe in magic at all?”

The sudden change of subject surprised him. “Uh, not really. They’re pretty typical for vanilla mortals, always coming up with alternate explanations for my powers.” He turned on his cocky grin. “Mostly they treat me like a normal family would treat one of their kids who said he wanted to be a musician or an actor. They strongly disapprove of my life choices, but they mostly just ignore them until the holidays or when they’re really drunk.”

She didn’t return his grin, or even look at him. She was quiet for a long while.

“How can you joke about that?” she asked eventually. “It obviously hurts you.”

He thought for a moment, then decided to tell her the truth. “How can I not?”

The hand that rested on his back twitched in a comforting squeeze. Then her thumb began to stroke up and down.

He suppressed another shiver, but he couldn’t keep his cock from, er, rising to the occasion.

They walked in silence to the end of the street and on to the next one.

“Even if I did have to bargain, which I don’t, you wouldn’t owe me anything,” she said. “Taking away your pain for even a little while pales in comparison to what you’ve done for me.”

He looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

Her gaze stayed focused straight ahead. “Karrin told me that after Harry died, you kept the White Council from finding me.”

Oh. That.

“What makes her think that?” he asked.

“She says she knows what it looks like when a cop’s slacking off.”

He snorted.

“Was she right?”

He sighed. “When is that woman not right?”

The fingers on his back squeezed again. “Why?”

The answer was complicated, but he owed her something.

“Running made you look guilty. They would have convicted you without debate.”

“What did that matter to you?” Her tone was bitter.

He tried not to take her question personally — her anger was directed at the Council. But did she really think so little of him?

“Because I knew you weren’t guilty.”

“How?”

“I’ve seen dark wizards before, and trust me, you aren’t one. You’re a good person who’s made some bad choices, but who hasn’t?” His fists clenched as the grief and helpless anger of that time came flooding back. “It’s bullshit that kids who don’t know any better are treated like criminals, and I wasn’t going to be responsible for one of them being beheaded. And not someone I knew personally, and liked, and flirted with —” He realized what he’d said and changed tactics. “And I felt like I owed it to Harry to — well, to do what I could,” he finished feebly.

He decided not to mention that, after Morgan’s death, the Wardens no longer had a single official executioner. If he’d brought Molly in and she’d been found guilty, the job would have fallen to him.

“If you’d been caught,” she said, “you could have been executed, too.”

“I don’t get caught,” he said lightly. “And if I had been, they wouldn’t have done anything. I’m kind of a big deal with the Wardens.”

She rewarded his joke with a soft smile. “Thank you, Carlos.”

The way she said his name set his heart off again. He gave her shoulders a squeeze.

“Flirting, huh?” she asked, eyes twinkling like icicles. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

He was trying to think of something clever to say when the twinkling faded to the murky greyness of the slush they walked on. She turned her head away.

“What’s wrong?”

Crap. He shouldn’t have mentioned the flirting.

“Nothing.” The waver in her voice told him that she was, in fact, capable of lying. “It’s just, this is nice.”

His heart sped up. He tried even harder to think of something clever or smooth to say, but all his blood seemed to be flowing to his cock, not his brain.

“And it just keeps reminding me how much I can’t have now,” she said. “A normal, mortal life, or even a wizard’s life, isn’t possible anymore. No settling down, no family, no kids. Just Winter.”

So she wanted all that, too? He’d also struggled with it. Being a wizard meant outliving most of your family, and if you fell in love with a vanilla mortal, it meant watching them wither and grow old without you. But Molly would be immortal now. Outliving the people you loved by a few centuries would be tough, but outliving them forever? That would be unbearably —

“Lonely,” he said aloud.

He adjusted his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Even if nothing happened between them, even if it was just walking down the street like this, she deserved to be held by someone.

“Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. She let her head fall onto his shoulder.

His brain froze completely, even as his stomach did a back-flip and his heart powered into overdrive. He continued to walk, but his mind was stuck in a loop.

He should do something. Should he kiss her? No, too much. Maybe lean his head against hers? Or say something? He should say something. Or do something.

By the twelfth time he’d been through the loop, he decided that something needed to be done. So he opened his mouth.

“But hey, that’s what the Winter Knight’s for, right?”

She tensed and picked her head up off his shoulder. She didn’t remove her hand or step back, but she seemed to put miles between them.

No, no, no, no, no. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why did he always have to open his big fat mouth?

“That’s the way it sometimes works, yes,” she said softly. “That’s how it was with Maeve and Slate. But Harry won’t. He has Karrin. And even if he didn’t …” She took a deep breath. “That ship sailed a long time ago, and I was the only one on it. I was out at sea for ages until I finally found my way back, and I don’t intend to board that ship again.”

He was so busy berating his own idiocy that it took him a moment to decipher the metaphor. Was she saying that she and Harry _hadn’t_ …?

That changed things. Like, a lot. If she wasn’t hung up on Harry …

He opened his big fat mouth again. “Well, if you ever find yourself in need,” he said, his cocky grin back in place, “I would happily volunteer as tribute.”

She turned her head sharply and stared at him for a long time. Her bright blue eyes, brilliant as the brightest stars on a cold, clear night, shot up and down, back and forth, as though searching for something in his face.

Then, without warning, she attacked him.


	4. Chapter 4

Contrary to what his _abuela_ , Harry Dresden, or that White Court bitch Lara Raith might believe, Carlos’s virginity did not mean he was as pure as the driven snow.

Well, not anymore. He had been for a long while, though. Puberty was tough. He’d never exactly been popular, and as his burgeoning magical powers began to manifest themselves in more and more strange ways — exploding drinks, faucets and water fountains blowing out like lawn sprinklers, that one horrifying time a toilet decided to perform an excellent impression of an overeager bidet — he was deemed an oddball by the other kids and largely ignored. When his mentor took him on as apprentice, he’d put the kibosh on any “sexual activity,” and Carlos had eagerly agreed, willing to do anything if it meant he could learn to harness the magic that had made him an outcast among his peers and family into something constructive and beneficial to the world.

So it wasn’t until what Dresden mockingly called “Warden camp” that Carlos had experienced what he deemed to be his sexual awakening. For the first time in his life, he met young people who were just like him — powerful, eager, and with lots of excess energy, sexual and otherwise. That was when he decided to reinvent himself; no longer would he be the oddball, the wallflower, the kid that no one liked. He had power and skills, and he’d be damned if he’d let them be a liability again. So he overcompensated — he flashed that cocky grin whenever he felt nervous or less than confident, and that, in turn, allowed him to feel more confident. He cracked jokes when he didn’t know how else to respond, and people thought he was funny. Girls, especially, although he was pretty sure the fact that he was attractive, Hispanic, and spoke a second language didn’t hurt either. He flirted, and they reciprocated. He hadn’t intended to cultivate a reputation as a playboy, but the times he was caught making out with different girls spread around quickly, and people always assumed more happened than actually did. In reality, both times — batting a thousand for getting caught — he never even made it past second base, but he wasn’t about to discourage the rumors.

It wasn’t until he graduated to official Warden status that he and Yuki Yoshimo started dating. Well, he’d thought it was dating; she’d thought it was more of a friends-with-moderate-benefits situation, and that was when he’d realized he was far too romantic for casual relationships. It had begun after their first big battle as Wardens. They started making out just to get their minds off the horrors they’d seen, and afterward it became a sort of tradition, a kind of thank-God-we’re-still-alive celebration. She gave him his first blow-job; he learned how to please a woman using only his tongue. The fantasy he’d built around their relationship came crashing down when he was promoted to regional commander and he asked her to come with him to L.A. She’d said thanks but no, she just wasn’t that into him, though she’d always be up for their version of a roll in the hay whenever they crossed paths. They did on a few occasions after that, but eventually their mutual attraction faded and their relationship evolved into a strong, healthy friendship.

She’d visited him in the hospital while he was recovering, which was nice until she told him she was engaged. He was happy for her, of course, but the news that one of his closest friends and Warden partners, who also happened to be the first girl he’d ever really loved, was getting married while he was still a single virgin who barely had time to sleep, much less date, didn’t exactly raise his spirits after a life-threatening and nearly paralyzing injury.

In the couple years since, he’d dated some — if begrudgingly going on blind dates his sister Maria set up for him could actually be called “dating.” He always found a way to ensure he never merited a second date; occasionally he also found a way to keep his tongue in practice, if only while rounding first base.

So when Molly Carpenter launched herself at him that cold, January night on a suburban Chicago sidewalk, it wasn’t his first bullfight.

But that didn’t mean he was prepared for the intensity of her charge.

She grabbed the collar of his jacket and pulled him toward her at the same time she lurched forward. Their lips met with a force he hadn’t expected, but which wasn’t entirely unwelcome, and he quickly obliged her. He moved to pull her closer, but she beat him to the punch with a single jerk of the hand that never moved from the bare skin of his lower back. She moaned as his hardness slammed into her; his tongue took advantage of the opportunity to explore her mouth. She nipped at it with her teeth, and he groaned, thrusting his hands into her silken hair and returning the gesture by biting her lip.

At that, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and whirled him around. His back slammed into something hard, but she never removed her hand and he felt no pain. She started to kiss her way down his neck to his collar bone.

He let his head fall back with a moan. She wrapped a leg around him, thrusting onto his cock until it started to ache with pleasure.

Her mouth found its way back to his, and she sped up, the motion of her hips starting to draw him close to the edge, clothes and all. He pulled her closer, tighter, met her thrusts with his own, and let out a sigh of “ _Dios_ , Molly” —

When she suddenly stopped.

She broke the connection of their lips, disentangled their legs, and pushed away from him until the only point of contact was her hand on his back.

Panting, he opened his eyes — he wasn’t sure when he’d closed them — to find himself leaning against a tree in someone’s front yard. He could feel the cold wetness of its bark seeping through his jacket onto the hot skin of his back.

Molly stood nearly an arm’s length away, eyes averted, gasping for air. Her free, shaking hand covered her face.

He frowned in concern and pushed himself off the tree. “Are you okay?”

When he moved toward her, she took a step away from him, so that the distance between them remained the same.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Every single nerve ending in his body begged to differ.

He shrugged and summoned his cocky grin. “That happens sometimes. People get overwhelmed by the sheer perfection of my body and —”

“This isn’t a game,” she snapped. “You’re a virgin, for God’s sake!”

He felt his face heat at that, and his erection diminished by several orders of magnitude.

“I’m so sorry I’m not experienced enough for you, Lady.” He let the familiar edge take over his tone. “Maybe the next time a vampire succubus offers to cure me of that horrid affliction, I’ll take her up on it.”

“Oh, cut it out with the martyr crap,” she said. “I get enough of that from Harry. I don’t give a damn about your experience. I’m a virgin, too.”

His jaw dropped. “Bullshit.”

Carlos had only ever seen _aurora borealis_ in photographs. But when Molly’s eyes blazed, he got the feeling that if he ever saw the real thing, it would pale in comparison.

“Why? Because I dress like a slut?”

He took a step back — only her fingertips remained on his back.

“No!” His heart was still pounding from their previous frolic, but he reeled from the emotional whiplash. “I only meant — your boyfriend, from before …”

He’d soulgazed the kid, as part of Harry’s investigation. He’d seen the mental and spiritual damage she’d done, and he’d seen that they’d been in love. He’d just assumed …

“Nelson?” Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “No, we never … And when Harry took me on as apprentice, he said no sex, because it would distract me from my training, and after he died — well, I wasn’t exactly in a place to start seducing men.”

“Oh.”

Once again, as with the nature of her relationship with Harry, he’d learned something about her that changed his view of her completely. And at the same time, not at all.

“Then why does it matter that I’m …?” _Dios,_ he still couldn’t say the word aloud.

“Because your first time shouldn’t be at the hands of Winter.” She was facing away from him now and spoke almost too softly to be heard. “You’re not a toy.”

He didn’t have a clue what that last part meant, but he definitely understood the first part. “With all due respect, _Lady_.” He allowed that edge back into his voice again. “I think I should be the one to decide that.”

In the blink of an eye, her face was three inches from his. Holy shit, she was fast. He tried to pull away, but her hand on his back prevented it. Her expression was as cold and impassive as an iceberg.

“What do you know about Maeve, the previous Winter Lady?”

“Uh.” It took his brain a moment to recover; his heart was racing. “Not — not much. Just that she was a psychotic bitch.”

“Why do you say that?”

Her stare was sharper than an icicle, and only then did he realize they weren’t soulgazing. He could have sworn he’d felt the tug earlier in the evening. How could they not be now?

“Um …” He swallowed. What had she asked him?

Her free hand was now gripping his collar, and she gave it a good shake. “What did you hear about Maeve that makes you say she was a psychotic bitch?”

“Just — just some stories.”

He slipped his hand into his pocket and gripped his rosary, though to prepare an attack or for comfort, he wasn’t sure.

“Like what?”

He was suddenly worried that whatever answer he gave might not be the right one. And that was if he could push his brain to even come up with an answer.

“Like — like — she was always trying to seduce people. Using her sexuality to distract and manipulate, and then going for the kill.”

Molly’s face softened. She broke their gaze, seemed to see where her hand was for the first time, and released his collar as if it were hot to the touch. Then she pushed herself away until she was at arm’s length from him again.

She started to walk out of the yard they were standing in and back to the sidewalk. He followed, refusing to allow her hand to leave his skin. That was their only connection. If he lost that …

“Yes,” she said. “Maeve used sex to manipulate and abuse. She was an awful Winter Lady. One of her — now my — jobs was to see to the care and education of the changelings of the Court — the children of mortals and Winter Fae.” She frowned. “Did you know that the previous Summer Lady, Lily, and Fix, the current Summer Knight, were changelings of the Winter Court?”

He shook his head.

“Maeve hurt them. _Children_ , who were, for all intents and purposes, her charges. Together, she and Slate abused them so much that they went to the Summer Knight for help. That’s how they came to be associated with Summer.”

“ _Dios_ ,” he breathed. He’d heard Maeve had been bad, but this — _psychotic bitch_ didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Exactly,” she said. “And that wasn’t even the worst thing she did. She was sick.” She spat the word like it was a nasty taste in her mouth. “And I don’t want to be like her,” she finished quietly.

He laughed at the sheer absurdity of the statement. “Are you kidding me? You’re nothing like that. You’re sensitive and kind and caring. You’re the opposite of Maeve in every way.”

She smiled slightly, and he could have sworn he saw her cheeks flush. “You don’t understand. The mantle of the Winter Lady — it pushes.” She straightened then, and her tone changed, suddenly all business. “What do you think when you hear the word ‘cold’? Everything that comes to mind.”

What the hell? First a Maeve biography quiz, now word association?

His thought must have shown on his face, because she chuckled and said, “Bear with me. I apprenticed under Harry.”

“That must have been terrible.” He smirked. “Puns everywhere.”

She laughed, and its beautiful music made his pulse speed up. His heart ached to hear it again.

“You’re one to talk, with your innuendos and _Frozen_ references,” she said. “Just tell me what you think when you hear ‘cold.’”

“Freezing. Snow. Ice. Coats. Gloves.”

“Okay. Now what if someone described a person as cold?”

“Cruel. Heartless.”

He frowned. He didn’t want to go that route. That’s where she wanted him to end up. So he wracked his brain for other uses of _cold_.

“Calculating. Manipulative.”

Oops. That was the word she’d used to describe Maeve.

“Rational. Logical.”

He tried to think of a synonym for _cold_ that described Molly, but that sent him in the opposite direction. Kind. Caring. Loving.

“Aloof,” he added feebly.

“Ooh,” she said, eyes twinkling. “S.A.T. word.”

“I keep trying to tell people I’m brilliant, but they always have to see it to believe it.”

Contrary to the word association game they were playing, the only thing her smile made him think and feel was warm.

“All those words you said?” she asked. “That’s Winter. Calculating. Aloof. Rational. But even more, it’s instinctual. Violent. Winter is the season of death, and survival is paramount.”

They reached the end of the street and walked on to the next.

“The mantle pushes,” she said again. “It’s there, at the back of my mind, whispering in my ear.” She closed her eyes in a grimace. “It’s been telling me to fuck you all night. I felt your loneliness and sadness with my mortal magic, and my Sidhe side keeps urging me to act on it. He’s weak, it says. He’s in pain. He wants it. He needs it. He’ll _thank you_ for it. Take him. He’s yours.”

Carlos swallowed. He suddenly had no saliva. “None of those things are wrong.” The words came out rough.

“That’s the problem,” she snapped. “Yes, the mantle is right about those things. But you’re not prey.”

She stopped and turned to face him. “You’re a good man, who is courageous and funny and kind. Who helped me when he didn’t have to. And who’s in so much pain.”

Her fingertips brushed his cheek, which burned at her touch. For a moment, they stood there in the cold night, watching each other, each not quite meeting the other’s eyes. He could feel her pulse pounding through her fingers, and her chest rose and fell faster than it should have while standing still.

Slowly, he brought his hand up to her face. He brushed her hair back, and she let out a shaky breath before closing her eyes. He leaned in to kiss her.

And she pulled away again, jerking her hand from his cheek.

“I can’t. You don’t deserve to be treated like a plaything for Winter, to be discarded when it’s had its fun. If I listen to the mantle, I’ll be just like Maeve, and I refuse to be anything like that bitch.”

His cock was so hard it ached, but it was his heart that hurt when she pulled away.

He sighed in frustration. “Did apprenticing under Harry include lessons on how to be a drama queen?”

“What?”

“He likes to go on about how melodramatic I am, but he’s the king of the guilt complex and the martyr complex and all kinds of other complexes I probably don’t know the names of. And he loves to over-think things to death.”

“What —?” she started again.

“I highly doubt that one night of amazing sex is going to turn you into Maeve.”

“One night?” She snorted. “In spite of all your playboy bluster, I get the feeling you’re not great with casual relationships.”

He stared at his boots. His cheeks heated. How did she —?

“It’s not rocket science, Carlos.” Once again, she responded as though she could read his thoughts. “You’re a virgin. Knowing that, it doesn’t take a genius to see that all your talk is just that. Deep down you’re a big fat romantic. And you deserve to be with someone who can give you what you need. Someone who will love you and understand you and be there to hold you when the nightmares come and when the pain gets to be too much.”

His vision blurred. She’d just spoken aloud things he’d never been able to put into words, things he’d hadn’t even known he needed until that moment. And she said it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.

No. Just someone like her.

He wiped at his nose and said, “And you? What do you deserve?”

She inhaled sharply.

“Now who’s pulling the martyr bullshit?” he asked. “If it was just the mantle pushing you, you’d have shut it down and left me on my stoop a long time ago. So why are we still doing this dance?”

She closed her eyes and bit her lip. “I don’t know how much is me and how much is Winter.”

He leaned toward her. “So let’s find out.”

She placed her hand on his chest and held him there. Damn, she was strong.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

“Because Karrin told me I had to make time,” he said. “This is me making time.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “She didn’t mean with me, moron!”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure she did. Didn’t you see the significant looks she and Harry were giving each other? Hell, they were probably watching from the window.”

She looked over her shoulder in the direction of Karrin’s house. They were several streets away by now, but she frowned, as though concerned Harry and Karrin still might somehow be able to see them.

“And even if she didn’t,” he continued. “It was good general advice, which I’m applying to this situation. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to ask you out?”

Her head spun back to him, and she made a little hiccuping sound.

“Years,” he said.

Her eyes looked ready to pop from her sockets. “Bullshit.”

“It’s not. Remember when you took us to the Raith place and hid the car with that veil?”

She nodded.

“I asked Harry right after that if you were seeing anyone. I played it off like a joke, but it wasn’t one.”

His pulse pounded so hard he felt light-headed. He couldn’t believe he was pouring his heart out to the Winter Lady in the middle of some random suburban Chicago neighborhood, but he wasn’t about to stop now.

“It didn’t seem appropriate, though, what with you being an apprentice under the Doom of Damocles and me being a Warden. I thought we’d have plenty of time later, when you were appointed to the Council and the Doom had been removed. But things didn’t work out like that.”

“No,” she whispered. “They didn’t.”

“Tonight I came to Chicago to see Harry,” he continued. “To get away from things for a night. And there you were. And Karrin told me to make time for the important things, and then you offered to walk me home. I’m not about to waste all the effort somebody put into making those stars align.”

He felt like his heart might explode if it beat any faster. He flashed his cocky grin — even when he was nervous, it always made him feel confident.

“And we did have that amazing make-out session the last street over.”

He widened his eyes on the word _amazing_ , and she smiled a bit.

“Maybe what you need is someone to remind you that you’re more than the mantle.” He took her chin in his hand and leaned in. “Fuck Winter. I want Molly.”

She made a noise that was somewhere between a whimper and a sigh and pulled him toward her. He looked into her eyes and saw that she was cold, lonely, and full of need, just like him. Their lips were about to meet.

And that was when the soulgaze started.


	5. Chapter 5

The eyes are the windows to the soul.

For wizards, that wasn’t just a saying. It was a literal truth.

If a wizard met a person’s eyes for more than a few seconds, he could see the essence of who they were, and they could see his in return. And what was seen could never be unseen. It was permanently seared on the viewer’s mind.

Every wizard experienced it differently. Some saw a series of frozen images; others watched souls like movies. When Carlos had discussed it with Dresden, Harry had explained that he saw someone’s life in symbolism and metaphor, sometimes big sequences with surround sound, and sometimes misty and mysterious flashes of ideas, like Luke in the Dagoba swamp in _The Empire Strikes Back_.

Of course. Drama queen.

For Carlos, although it was called a soul _gaze_ , what he saw was never the important part. He’d never understood why — perhaps it was the love of singing and playing instruments that his family had instilled in him from birth — but Carlos experienced soulgazes as music.

When he looked into a person’s eyes, Carlos heard their soul as a musical theme, like the score of a movie, that described the type of person they were. The soul of his mentor, Raul, had been strong, confident, and serious, a heroic theme with lots of horns and percussion. Yuki’s had been full of graceful strings and the occasional electric guitar riff when things got too boring. Lara Raith’s had sounded like the theme of a femme fatale in a noir — sexy, seductive piano overlaying a menacing motif of dissonant horns and dangerous drums.

When he’d soulgazed Harry, he’d heard a solo, solid, stubborn melody in the deep brass — trombone or French horn, maybe —  but the accompaniment had been all over the map. Sometimes light, beautiful strings; other times dark percussion. Sometimes it was a cacophony of so many dissonant harmonies that the main melody could hardly be heard, and at one point, it was just the lonely horn, alone and unaccompanied. Whenever Carlos became frustrated with Harry, he pulled up the memory of his friend’s theme and just listened. No matter how many times he did, he always came away from it with a new understanding of Harry.

Everyone’s theme was different, of course. Some were boring, and some were interesting on a technical level if not particularly memorable. The ones he liked the most were the ones that belonged to people he cared about.

But Molly Carpenter’s theme was the most hauntingly beautiful piece of music Carlos had ever heard.

It seemed to contain a little bit of everything. It began with a quirky piano melody, something catchy and fun you could learn in an afternoon. Staccato violins and the high woodwinds provided lively syncopated harmonies, while the low woodwinds shrouded the whole proceedings in an intriguing aura of mystery.

All the while, quiet and deep, ominous cellos and bass hummed with potential and power, creating a sense of constantly building tension until, at varying and erratic intervals, every instrument — led by the cymbals and percussion section — exploded in a terrifying boom of surprised dissonance, only to subside and begin to build again.

In spite, or perhaps because, of its unpredictability, the layers of multiple complex motifs seemed to fit together perfectly, like the piece of a puzzle that connected several seemingly incongruous sections into a single, unified whole.

For the first time in his life, listening to someone’s soul brought Carlos to tears.

And yet the utter imperfect perfection of Molly’s theme wasn’t the most extraordinary thing about it. In a normal soulgaze, Carlos saw the person standing before him, in the same clothes and even position they occupied in real life, so solid he could touch them. The lone exception had been Lara Raith, who had been accompanied by a grotesque humanoid creature, skin luminous silver and eyes burning white, leering at him over her shoulder. Her eyes and skin grew more like the creature’s as her theme reached its darker motifs.

Molly Carpenter had the honor of being the second exception. She stood before him as a sort of translucent hologram, flickering and fading in and out like a poorly connected light bulb. Her image and her theme were synced, so that as the hologram oscillated in and out of view, her soul’s music waxed and waned and skipping like a scratched CD, to be replaced by a looming, deafening silence.

A sharp pressure accompanied each skip and flicker, as though an unseen force were pushing Carlos away. He struggled against it, yearning to absorb the essence that was Molly for as long as he could, until, with a final booming crash of the cymbals, her theme cut off, her image winked out, and he was hurled from the soulgaze.

The force of his expulsion propelled him into the real world, where he slipped on a patch of ice and landed flat on his back in the snow. Molly, hand still in contact with the bare skin of his back, lost her balance and fell onto his chest, forcing all the air from his lungs in a loud huff.

He lay there gasping, heart pounding, trying to bring order to his thoughts. He wasn’t in pain — at least not physically— but tears rolled down his cheeks as he recovered from the most emotional soulgaze of his life.

Molly didn’t get up immediately, either. She gripped his jacket tightly in one hand, the other sandwiched between his back and the ground — even in free fall she’d never let go — face buried in his chest, breaths coming as quickly as his.

He wrapped his arms around her in a strong hug and buried his face in her hair, using it to dry his own tears and allowing her scent — an odd yet comforting mix of evergreen, peppermint, figs, and vanilla — to calm him.

He didn’t know how long they lay there, but something about her presence seemed to keep him warm and dry in spite of the dirty, slushy snow surrounding them and the quiet snowflakes that had started to flutter gently from the sky.

Eventually she raised her head and met his gaze. He returned it steadily; they’d already reaped the consequences. She brought her long, slender fingers up to stroke his cheek and said, voice thick with emotion, “Carlos Ramirez, you have a beautiful soul.”

His breath caught in his throat, and her face blurred before him. Never in his life had he received a higher compliment. Secretly, in the deepest parts of him he didn’t like to visit, he’d wondered if his soul was too tarnished, too damaged, too _broken_ for anyone to love.

She’d been right when she’d said he no longer had hope. And in a single sentence, she’d given it back to him.

He wanted to return the favor, to tell her that he’d never heard a soul’s theme more beautiful and captivating. But he couldn’t lie to her, and if he told her that, he’d be ignoring the most disturbing part of the soulgaze — something was wrong with her soul, and he didn’t know how to put it into words.

While all those things raced through his mind, her eyes never left him. He was saved from having to decide what to say, if anything, when she cupped his cheek in her hand and scooted up his chest to brush her lips against his.

This kiss was as tender as their first had been passionate and intense. His brain froze, and all he could do was respond in kind. Their lips parted only to touch again, just as softly. And again, and again.

With every gentle kiss, his stomach fluttered, and his chest swelled just a bit more with a warmth so strong and welcome he thought he might burst. At the last possible second, he swallowed three hopelessly romantic words that tried to force their way past his lips. Three little words he’d never said to anyone before, not even to Yuki, because no one had ever made him feel like this before. His heart ached to say them, and only by closing his eyes and forcing himself to enjoy the feel of her lips on his, their exchange of breaths, her gentle touch on his cheek, was he able to keep them from escaping and betraying him for the romantic idiot he was.

Only when she broke away for good did he open his eyes, and he saw only Molly, surrounded by a halo of snowflakes which somehow hadn’t melted on contact with her. Her hair sparkled like a fresh snowdrift in the sunlight; her skin was as smooth and radiant as a frozen pond. But her eyes — _Dios_ , her eyes twinkled like icicles, watching him with a yearning and tenderness that compelled him to clamp his mouth shut in order to keep from thoughtlessly spouting those three little words. He swallowed hard — they didn’t go down smoothly, but go down they did, and hopefully for good.

She couldn’t possibly feel the same.

Could she?

“Spend the night with me.” Her voice wrapped around him like a winter wind and sank deep into his bones, enveloping him in its spell.

His heart leapt, and the grin he flashed her was his rarest. Not cocky to give him confidence, and not mocking because he didn’t know what else to say.

This one was genuinely, fervently happy. It had been so long since that one had made an appearance that he hadn’t realized it still existed in his repertoire.

“Lady,” he said. “Twist my arm.”

She laughed then, and as it descended upon him, gentle as a light snow, he heard the quirky piano melody of her soul’s theme.

She rolled off him, making his body nearly groan in protest, and glanced at his definitely-too-tight pants.

“You need so much convincing,” she said.

He rose up to his elbows and shrugged. “That thing has a mind of its own. It never needs to be convinced of anything.”

She tipped her head in acknowledgment and offered him her free hand. They stood up together, less awkwardly than he’d expected considering her other hand still lay upon the small of his back.

He tried to brush the snow off his butt and back, but his jacket and pants were soaked through. Had she somehow kept the cold and wet away from him before, or had he just not noticed it?

He looked up to find an open Way not two feet in front of them. His jaw dropped. He hadn’t felt even a whisper of power. She’d opened a freaking Way with the same amount of effort he used to unspill a glass of water. A small, almost empty glass of water.

“I know,” she said at his reaction. “It’s weird, suddenly being capable of the sort of magical heavy lifting I only ever dreamed of. And not just capable — I just opened a Way while simultaneously sustaining a spell that’s been going for at least half an hour.” Her hand twitched against his back. “That would have wiped me out before, if I could have done it at all. Now I’m not even out of breath.” Her voice dropped. “It’s scary.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders again and gave her a squeeze. “It’s badass, is what it is. And I thought I couldn’t get more turned on.”

A wicked gleam flashed in her eyes. “I’m sure we can figure out something.”

His pants tightened a notch more as she took a step forward into the Way — a quiet, pastoral winter scene — but a sudden thought made him pause.

“Um, are we going to your place? Like, in the Nevernever?”

She rolled her eyes. “I have a place here in Chicago. I think Arctis Tor might be a bit intimidating for a first date.”

He let out a breath that was half sigh of relief, half nervous chuckle; his cocky grin returned. “Is that what this is? A first date?”

“Something like that,” she said with a smirk.

And together they stepped out of Chicago and into the Nevernever.

 

* * *

  

Less than thirty seconds later, they stepped out of the Nevernever and into Chicago again.

Carlos didn’t know Chicago like he knew L.A. He wasn’t sure how far they’d actually traveled, but the area looked pretty high-end — condos and gated communities. They exited the Way into the nicest alley he’d ever seen and crossed the street to a gate with a guard booth. Molly smiled at the guard, who looked up from her book, smiled, and buzzed them in.

Molly unlocked a door, and they entered an apartment building, where she led him — hand upon the small of his back still — through another locked door, down two flights of stairs to a third door.

He could feel the wards without even trying. Damn.

Molly opened the door and said, “Please come in. _Mi casa es su casa._ ”

He arched an eyebrow at her. Her eyes widened, then she flushed a deep red.

“Um — sorry. I just meant —”

“ _Tu español esta bueno_.” He smirked and walked through ahead of her. “But your accent’s atrocious,” he added under his breath, but loudly enough for her to hear. “And you used the formal _su_ , which I appreciate but isn’t necessary _._ And —”

She smacked his arm playfully.

“Hey, I’m just trying to teach you —”

Molly flicked a hand, and the apartment was bathed in light.

Both his voice and feet stuttered to a stop.

Her apartment was enormous, and not just high-end — really high-end.

The living room was large enough to consist of three separate areas, and there was plenty left for at least one more. There was a sitting area around a large fireplace in one corner, a sort of study area with chairs and a desk and built-in bookshelves in another, exercise equipment — an elliptical and a freaking full weight bench — in yet another. Hardwood floors covered in expensive carpets. Vaulted ceilings. A little bar area separated the living room from the kitchen, which was almost as large as and definitely far nicer than the one in his family’s restaurant. Granite countertops, a six-burner gas stove, recessed lighting, stainless steel appliances. A couple of solid oak doors led off the main open space.

“ _Madre de Dios_ ,” Carlos muttered. “This was the less intimidating place?”

Molly didn’t try too hard to hide a smirk. “I’m sorry. Did I insult your manhood?”

“My manhood is large enough to not be affected by petty insults,” he said. “But damn. I guess being a queen of Faerie gets you some impressive digs.”

She walked further into the apartment, turning on more lights with various murmurs flicks of her wrist, and he followed. “Actually, I had this before. Bought it from the Svartalves.”

He stopped in his tracks. Again. “You what?”

“I helped them out a while back. Saved them from a Fomor attack. As part of their thank you, they allowed me to purchase this apartment.” She shrugged. “It’s under the aegis of Svartalfheim.”

“Under the —” He heaved a heavy sigh. “How come Chicago gets all the fun, useful stuff — Svartalves, the B.F.S., Marcone, most of the White Court back-up — and I have to deal with the fucking Fomor alone all the time?”

It came out more bitter than he’d intended, so as he took off his boots, he added, “Where’s the L.A. love?” with a chuckle and his cocky grin.

But Molly wasn’t fooled. She frowned, unzipping his jacket. He shrugged out of it, and she started to unbutton his shirt.

“You don’t have to hide it,” she said. “I know you’re angry and hurt. You can be yourself with me.”

She reached the final button, and his shirt fell to the floor, too. Her hand ran down his chest, fingers brushing his numerous scars.

His flesh broke out into goosebumps at her touch, and he shivered.

“I want to be with you,” she whispered. “The real you. Not the one you like to show people.”

At that, he grabbed her face none too gently and kissed her, hard. She thrust herself against him with a whimper, and he took the opportunity to reach up under her shirt and, with only a few fingers, unclasped her bra.

“Mmm,” she said, while he worked his way down her neck to the hollow of her throat. Her head fell back to expose it. “Impressive. That was a three-clasper.”

“Talented,” he said between kisses. “Skilled.”

Through some impressive sleight-of-hand, her shirt and bra joined the rapidly growing pile of discarded clothes.

He took a moment to admire her topless, but didn’t let it stop him from cupping a lily-white breast in each hand.

“Exactly how much —” She let out a hiss of pleasure when he began to caress each nipple with a thumb. “— of a virgin are you?”

He grinned. “I may have stolen a base or two.”

She responded by spinning him around and slamming him into one of those sturdy, Svartalf-built walls. He was starting to like that move.

Her mouth found his, and their tongues explored each other while his fingers stroked her breasts like the keys of a piano. That elicited a particularly sexy moan from her, which he returned with a growling bite of her lip.

He yanked her up against him, wrapping both arms around her in a tight hug, so that every part of her upper body was touching every part of his. She melted into him, and they leaned against the wall, exchanging breaths, holding each other. He reveled in the feel of her soft, bare skin against his chest.

Once again, he swallowed those stupid romantic words that tried to force themselves out. She’d said he could be himself, that she wanted him to be, but he knew that would be too much. She’d laugh him and his delusional fantasies out of her fancy apartment, and he’d be out on his ass again, broken, alone, and in pain.

She surprised him by how long she stayed pressed against his chest. Yuki usually got bored after a few seconds of that — _Stop comparing women in your head, idiot!_ — but Molly rubbed her body up against him, slowly running one hand or the other up his back, neck, through his hair, down his chest and around again.

It was the single most sensual thing a woman had ever done to him.

He didn’t realize just how hard he’d gotten until she brushed her hand over his pants. He hissed sharply.

“Bedroom?” she suggested. “I have a huge bed.”

He pushed away from the wall and picked her up, her legs wrapping around his waist, her head falling to rest on his shoulder, their bare chests still pressed hard against each other.

He walked farther into the apartment, avoiding furniture and exercise equipment, then stopped.

“Um, where …?”

She giggled into his neck. “The one on the left.”

He took a step.

“No, right! Sorry. My left.”

He stopped and looked at her. “You sure?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Yes.”

“And I won’t get zapped by a Svartalf ward or aegis or whatever when I open the door?”

She shook her head, laughter overcoming speech, and buried her face in his neck.

“So glad one of us is getting a kick out of this,” he mumbled.

She slapped his ass. Hard.

As pleasant as the sensation was, he might have let out a somewhat unmanly yelp of surprise.

She collapsed into giggles again. “Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying yourself, Carlos Ramirez.”

Though he knew she couldn’t see it, he grinned as he turned the knob and kicked open the door to her bedroom.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned previously, the secret rating of this fic is E, not for Everyone but for EXPLICIT. This chapter contains much explicit sexy times, so if that makes you squicky, consider thyself warned. This chapter also contains much explicit Carlos angst, so if _that_ makes you squicky, well, thou hast probably already stopped reading, since there was an awful lot of it in previous chapters.

Molly continued to laugh as Carlos stepped into her darkened bedroom. He didn’t want her to stop, really; he could have listened to her laugh forever. Her soul’s theme replayed in his mind, and her laugh mingled with the melody line until he couldn’t decipher what was real and what was in his head.

She muttered something and waved a hand, and a lamp flickered to life on a bedside table. He took a quick look around the room — larger than his entire studio apartment in L.A., filled with antique-looking but definitely svartalf-made vanity, dresser, and armoire — but found he didn’t much care for anything but the main attraction.

In the center sat a magnificent mahogany, four-poster king-size bed. Or at least king-size was the closest approximation he could make, since that was the biggest size he knew of. He’d only ever seen a king bed once — without the luxury of sleeping in it — but Molly’s svartalf-built bed was even larger than that, only it looked a thousand times more comfortable and a million times sturdier. Then again, the svartalves were more than just peerless magical craftsmen; there were also widely known for being honorable, dangerous, and filled with lust for anything considered beautiful. Molly’s bed was really a culmination of all that into a single piece of artistry.

But Carlos imagined the svartalves’ honor might have been a bit piqued at the complete lack of respect given to their masterpiece. The bed was a mess, unmade and strewn with various items of clothing, and the surrounding floor looked like it hadn’t known the business end of a cleaning implement in some time. It was buried under so many layers of dust, clothes, and random magical implements and ingredients that an archaeologist would have required a considerable grant and an army of grad students to even think about excavating it. She might have been a faerie queen with a bed bigger than his bedroom, a bedroom bigger than his apartment, and an apartment bigger than his family’s restaurant, but she was clearly neither a neat-freak nor interested in a maid, which she could definitely afford. As a bachelor who lived alone and was also neither a neat-freak nor interested in a maid, which he could definitely not afford, he felt surprisingly at home.

“Sorry it’s a mess,” she murmured into his shoulder, a residual smile audible in her voice. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“No problem,” he said with a grin. “My footwork is excellent.”

The punishment for his smooth arrogance was cruel and swift. He stepped into the room and tripped over the threshold.

He caught both his balance and her — she tightened her arms and legs around him like a baby spider monkey clinging to its mother — and swore severely in Spanish.

“That was not my fault!” she declared in a renewed burst of giggles.

He grimaced, and his face felt like a building recently evacuated by Harry Dresden. He mumbled another string of Spanish obscenities.

“Ooh, that sounds bad,” she said. “What does it mean?”

He repositioned her in his arms and continued gingerly into the room. “Roughly translated, it means, ‘Nice one, asshole. Way to charm her with your suave klutziness. Ladies love that.’”

She giggled again — the melody of her theme was playing on repeat in his head — but for some reason, this time it made his heart flutter.

“I had no idea Spanish was such an efficient language,” she said.

She ran her free hand — the other still resting on his back, in spite of his near-pratfall — through his hair, around his neck, and all the way down his back. Then she nipped at his ear and whispered, “Don’t be embarrassed. It gave me a lovely view of your tight ass.”

She gave said ass a squeeze.

Between that and the nibble at his ear, he groaned, crossing the room in three long strides and, fortunately, without further incident.

 He might have been a Warden, but he wasn’t Superman, and she was a big woman. The stumble hadn’t helped, either. So by the time he got to the bed, his arms gave out, and she landed less gently than he’d intended.

She hurriedly gathered the mess of clothes and tossed them into a far corner of the room before kicking the sheets away and primly adjusting herself so that she was laying on the bed properly, with her head on a down pillow. Then she hooked a finger into his pants and pulled him to her.

Grinning, he climbed onto the bed — which was not only enormous in length and width but also mounted on a small platform — and threw his leg over her body so he could kneel over her. Her legs wrapped around his thighs and jerked him forward, off-balance, onto her chest with an _oof_.

He spat out another curse and felt himself flush again, but she pulled him into a deep, forceful kiss.

“You can keep swearing if you like,” she said. “But I’d prefer you put that filthy mouth to better use.”

So he did.

Cupping her left breast in one hand and stroking the nipple in a circular motion that made her moan, he kissed down her neck to her other nipple and gave it a lick.

She inhaled sharply, gripping a chunk of his hair in her clenched fist.

Encouraged, he took the nipple into his mouth and sucked, brushing his tongue across it in the same motion as his thumb on the other side.

She hissed in pleasure.

He continued for a minute or so before switching breasts. Her breaths came faster and faster, and she started to roll her hips against him.

He took that as a sign to move downward.

But when he tried, she held fast to the clump of his hair. Her hand tightened on the small of his back.

“You’re going to need to let go sooner or later,” he murmured around her nipple.

“No.” The word came out as a whimper.

Frowning, he lifted his head to see her face.

She shook her head. “If I do, your pain will come back.”

“I know.” He flashed his cocky grin. “But you’re kind of cramping my style here.”

She smirked. “So adjust your style, _Señor_ Suave.”

The sound Spanish from those lips, even mockingly, elicited a growl of approval from deep inside him. He made a second attempt to move south, but she stopped him again.

“It’ll hurt.” Her voice cracked, and he felt as though a knife had sliced across his heart.

In an instant, he’d stretched out next to her so that his face was even with hers. “Will it hurt you?” he asked, stroking her hair.

That was a different story altogether. He’d never willingly do anything to cause her pain.

She frowned slightly, and then her eyes widened in realization. “Oh. No. I got that under control earlier. I just …” Her free hand brushed his cheek, her blue eyes watery. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

His stomach did a somersault.

No one in his life cared about his pain so much that it brought them to the verge of tears. Not even him.

Usually.

He brushed his lips against each of her eyes in turn and leaned closer, pressing his naked chest against hers.

“You won’t be hurting me.” The words came out rough. “Just … returning things to normal. It’s midnight. Time for me to turn back into a pumpkin.”

“No, Carlos …”

 _Dios._ The way she said his name somehow made his heart both leap for joy and break in agony.

“Molly.” He tried to infuse her name with the feelings he could never admit aloud. “ _Amorcita._ ”

Crap. That one made its way out of his mouth before he could stop it.

It was an endearment he’d only tried once with Yuki, and she hadn’t responded well — or, really, she hadn’t responded at all, so he’d let it drop.

But he loved the way it sounded for Molly. And so did she, if her soft and sensual “Mmm,” was anything to go by. Her eyes sparkled like icicles, but she seemed to melt in his arms.

She probably didn’t understand exactly what it meant, but even monolingual Americans knew _amor_. Or maybe she just thought his Spanish was sexy.

“ _Amorcita_.” He tried it out again, giving the R an extra little roll. Thinking of her like that made him grin like the romantic idiot he was.

The smile she flashed in return was enough to light up the room.

And that gave him the courage to say what he needed to say.

“I want to repay you. Not as a bargain,” he added hastily. “But you gave me a gift — you took away the pain that’s become so much a part of my life that I didn’t realize what it’s done to me. Because you were right — I didn’t used to be so cynical and caustic. And hopeless.”

Her brow furrowed deeply, but he put a finger to her lips.

“I can’t tell you how much it’s helped me, just a little while without it. I don’t like what it’s done to me, and I’m not going to let it continue. You did that. And I want to thank you for it.” He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I want to please you, Molly. I want to make you come.”

He pulled away and gave her a roguish smile.

“Really, I want to make you scream. I could try to do it with just my fingers, but my tongue is where the magic’s really at. So I need you to move your hand.”

She swallowed, and he could see the longing on her face. He could feel the need emanating from her entire body.

He sighed in frustration — half-real, half-pretend. “ _Dios_ , Molly, I’m not diving on a grenade here. Just let it go.”

She rolled her eyes, but with a smile. It took him a moment to understand why. He hadn’t intended to make the _Frozen_ reference again, but whatever worked.

He reached around his back and touched her hand. It squeezed against his bare skin. He closed his eyes and focused for a moment, preparing for the wave of pain, and then, with a deep breath, he lifted her hand from his back, and —

Nothing.

He snorted. “Well, that was anticlimactic. All that melodrama for nothing.”

Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “What?”

“You must be better at that spell than you thought.” He resumed his kissing at her breasts. “Because I don’t feel a thing.”

“Wait.” She jerked his head up by the hair until they could see each other. “Are you serious?”

“Trust me, my poker face isn’t that great. I can do a back-flip if you’d like me to prove it, but I’d rather put my money where my mouth is.” He licked her nipple. “As it were.”

She hissed and released his hair, but her tone was businesslike. “Huh. I’ll have to tell Mab. Maybe I’m making more progress than I thought.”

He kissed his way down her abdomen. “Please refrain from referencing your scary-ass boss, the Queen of Air and Darkness.” He undid her jeans, slipping them off with her underwear. “Some of us are trying to keep a boner up here.” He tossed her clothes away.

She giggled, and he kissed down, past her bellybutton to the top of her pubic bone.

And then he went to work.

He had a process, a _modus operandi_ , when it came to oral sex. Sure, the last time he’d done it in a real-time scenario was almost a decade ago, but he’d practiced the theory … well, a few times while making out. Fine, he might be a little rusty, but it was all he had. It was probably like riding a bike, right?

His tongue flicked lightly across her clitoris, just to test the waters. She gasped.

He grinned, and realized that he didn’t need to remember how to ride the bike. Molly would show him how.

He nuzzled into her, taking in her smell. Something about her scent set him off, and his tongue shot into her vagina, surprising even himself; he’d never done that before.

She let out a moan and thrust her hips up to meet him.

He took that as a good sign and returned his attention to her clitoris. He started with slow, light licks, speeding up as her breathing did. When her moans changed to a higher key, he inserted a single finger into her.

She responded immediately, gyrating so that he barely had to slide his finger in and out. He explored her, adjusting the angle until she cried out softly.

He smiled into her.

Then he slid in a second finger.

All the while, his tongue flicked faster and faster.

He could feel her skin heating up as she flushed with passion. He decided this wasn’t as counterintuitive as it seemed. The warm winters in L.A. were still Winter, after all.

Her moans grew louder, more frequent. The rhythm of his tongue sped up to match the thrusts of her hips.

He inserted a third finger. _Dios_ , she was so wet, it slid in easily.

She started to thrash, and his tempo was briefly thrown off when she bashed somewhat painfully into his nose. But he found the rhythm again quickly, and sped it up.

“Yes, Carlos,” she groaned.

His cock ached at the need in her voice.

Her hands clenched into fists, gripping the sheets as her thighs tightened around him. She was gasping, panting, moaning. And loudly.

He pushed his rapidly fatiguing tongue into overdrive and thrust his fingers in and out, as deep as they would go. She cried out — its proximity to a scream made him smile — and then fell silent. Her body arched under him, but he didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down.

She rode the orgasm and relaxed, only to climax with another cry a few moments later.

He still didn’t stop.

She climaxed a third time, and maybe a fourth, although by that time he wasn’t quite sure if they were individual orgasms or just one long one.

Not that it mattered.

She let out a final, desperate cry, and a warm deluge engulfed his senses.

He slowed, overwhelmed by the essence of Molly. Her soul’s theme reverberated in his head as he tasted her.

She continued to thrash weakly, and he removed his fingers. He couldn’t resist giving them a lick, or thrusting his tongue into her a couple of times.

“Oh,” she sighed, panting. “Oh, God.”

“Actually, I prefer Carlos.”

She chuckled, eyes closed, still gasping for air. Her face was flushed, and her entire body was covered in a sheen of sweat. He stretched out beside her, watching her return to reality. He’d never seen her so vulnerable, so raw, so beautiful.

He stroked her cheek and something in his chest swelled until he was forced to swallow those three stupid words again. He contented himself with kissing her a few times, but only on her forehead, cheek, nose — he wasn’t sure if she’d want him to kiss her on the mouth.

She turned her head lazily toward him, and her eyes fluttered open, hazy with post-orgasm euphoria.

She smiled at him, and his heart leapt into his throat.

“Are you sure,” she said, still out of breath, “you’re a virgin?”

He flashed her his most wicked grin. “Technically.”

“Mmm,” she said, closing her eyes again. “That’s the only way you could be. You’re … excellent at that.”

For reasons he couldn’t entirely understand, his stomach performed some complicated gymnastics at the compliment.

Then her smile evaporated.

“I’m sorry about …” Her cheeks, already pink, flushed darker. “That’s never happened before.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s a good thing.”

“But you must’ve … your mouth was down there —”

“Molly,” he said. “I like the way you taste.”

Her eyes snapped open, wide and uncertain. “Really?”

He smiled. “Really. And for the record, that was a first for me, too.” He raised his chin. “I consider it a point of pride.”

She seemed to relax, closing her eyes with an unmistakably relieved smile. “Good to know I can keep things interesting. You seem to be quite experienced. How did you learn?”

“That, Lady,” he said, tapping his finger on his nose, even though she couldn’t see it — Harry was right, he could definitely be melodramatic when he wanted — “is a trade secret. I’m afraid if I told you, I’d have to decide to kill you, then have second thoughts and debate internally about whether or not I could bring myself to do it, and in the end have a change of heart because you just swept me off my feet with your charm and gumption.”

Her laugh rang out like jingle bells on a sleigh, and as his heart fluttered, he noted that he hadn’t been joking about her sweeping him off his feet.

She sighed as her laugh petered out, and when she turned her gaze to him again, she seemed to be coming back to herself.

“I’ve always liked how funny you are,” she said. “Harry’s a wise-ass, but you’re actually really funny.”

He shrugged. “I’d say I try, but I really don’t. I’m just naturally this talented.”

She chuckled, rolling to her side to face him, cheek resting on her crooked elbow. “I know the bravado’s an act, but other people can see that you really are talented. I hope that you see it too, deep down.”

She ran her hand up his bare chest, over his shoulder, to rest on the back of his neck. He shivered and lost himself in her twinkling blue eyes.

“What does _amorcita_ mean?”

“Um —” He swallowed, giving his head a shake to bring himself back to the present. He felt suddenly foolish; he’d hoped she might forget about that. “It’s a term of endearment, like darling or sweetheart.”

“I figured. But what does it literally mean?” She shrugged. “I took German in high school.”

She looked a little sheepish and bit her lip, and he found himself wanting to do the same.

“And how well has that been serving you, _Fräulein_?”

“Well, it certainly hasn’t gotten me laid, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It was his turn to laugh. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short. You’re pretty funny, too.”

But she was still waiting for an answer. He looked away, embarrassed. Translating the endearment seemed so intimate somehow. “ _Amor_ means love.”

“I knew that one.”

He saw her grin in his peripheral vision, and his gaze was drawn back to her. She was captivating.

“Right.” His heart pounded in his chest. She was touching him, and she was naked, and his cock was aching for release. “ _-Cita_ is a feminine diminutive suffix that can be — and is — attached to pretty much anything in Spanish to make it little and cute. So _amorcita_ means ‘little love.’”

His heart skipped a few beats. _Amorcita_ flowed in Spanish. It was natural, just like saying _sweetheart_ or _darling_. But the literal translation was —

“Beautifully poetic,” she said. Her eyes tracked up and down his face, as though she were drinking him in. “What’s the masculine form?”

“Uh —” That was a question he hadn’t been expecting, and his pulse beat double-time while he tried to imagine why she might be asking without getting his hopes up for anything stupid and romantic. “- _Cito_. _Amorcito_.”

She pulled him close, drawing her hand from his neck up to his cheek, and whispered, “ _Gracias, amorcito_. That was a wonderful gift.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. He’d never in his life heard anything sexier.

“May I kiss you?” he asked.

She made a face, a sort of good-natured scowl. “You’re asking that now? You rounded third, and now you’re asking for permission to go back and touch first? Do you want to be called out? Because I wasn’t going to appeal. I was willing to let that one slide.”

Had he thought she couldn’t get any sexier? Because crafting elaborate — and accurate — baseball metaphors, complete with puns, was a skill Carlos hadn’t even known he required of a woman until this very moment.

“My mouth isn’t exactly clean right now,” he said. “I didn’t want to kiss you if —”

He didn’t get to finish before she pulled him into a deep kiss. But she didn’t stop there. She kept pulling until he was on top of her again.

“Men never believe it,” she said between kisses, “when a woman says … that asking permission  … is sexy.”

She reached down and undid his pants. His cock sprang out, and she rubbed her hand up and down the shaft a few times.

He gasped, fumbling awkwardly for far too long to pull his pants down and kick them away.

“You want permission?” she asked. “I want you to fuck me. Now.”

She stroked him a few more times, and he hissed in pleasure.

“Are you sure?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

She most definitely did not. She looked like she might not take no for an answer.

His stomach did a somersault. And a back-flip. And a few dozen jumping jacks. And then it just hopped up and down for a while like it was on a trampoline.

“Are _you_ sure?” she asked.

He’d never been more sure about anything in his life.

He grabbed his cock and prepared to guide it into her.

Then he froze.

“Um —” He felt himself blush furiously. “I don’t have a — You don’t happen to be on some sort of special faerie queen birth control, do you?”

She blinked several times, her face devoid of any indication of her thoughts. “Special faerie queen birth control? Not that I’m aware of.” She pressed her lips together as though trying not to smile. “But I am on regular old human birth control.”

He grimaced. “Right.” His face was on fire.

“Don’t,” she said, laughing. “It’s a fair question. And a very responsible one, too, Warden.”

With the utterance of a single word, the mood shifted from fervent to frigid faster than he could think _Fuuuck_.

She winced. “That sounded kinkier in my head.”

Of course. He knew she hadn’t meant anything by it, but that didn’t change anything.

He pushed himself away from her and sat back on his haunches.

He was a Warden of the White Council. She was a former warlock under the Doom of Damocles and the current Winter Lady.

She rose gracefully to her knees in an instant. “Don’t think about it.”

She stroked his cheek with her thumb and ran her hands down his neck, his chest, and back up to cradle his face. She kissed him gently.

He turned his face away. “This is a bad idea.”

“Most of the best things in life are.”

She kissed him again and reached down to grip his cock. He felt it throb against her and let out a groan.

“Are you honestly debating the political ramifications of this?” she asked. “Now? A Warden became the Winter Knight, for fuck’s sake.”

“Which pretty much gave him a Get Out of Jail, Free card. Harry Dresden always has a way of wriggling out of any Council punishment.”

“How about we not talk about him?”

“You brought him up,” he snapped.

Her eyes darkened like an oncoming blizzard. “You’re the one who wanted this in the first place, and now that we’re here, you’re chickening out?”

He jerked back as though she’d slapped him. The worst part was that she was right. What had he been thinking?

“Is it me?” Her shoulders slumped, and she suddenly looked very young.

“Of course not. It’s —”

“Who I am.” She let out a heavy sigh. “This is my own fault. I was stupid. I should have known it was too good to be true. You said fuck Winter, you wanted Molly. I thought —” She wiped at her eyes. “I thought you’d be different.”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I could lose my cloak.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Anger swirled in his chest. He stood abruptly and backed several feet away from the bed. “It would be. I help people.”

She barked out a laugh so cold and mirthless it sent a shiver down his spine. “By using your shiny sword to execute kids who don’t know any better?”

The cruel words conjured an image, forever seared into his mind, of a hooded figure kneeling on concrete. His sword sliced through the neck and across his own heart.

“Fuck you,” he snarled. “The Fomor have L.A., but I’m the only person protecting people there and in large chunks of the West Coast.”

“Single-handedly protecting a city from the Fomor?” she asked, her voice bitter and mocking. “Please, _Warden_ , tell me what that’s like.”

“Oh, yes, the Ragged Lady, single-handedly protecting Chicago.” He parroted her tone and cranked it up a notch. “Complete with training from the Leanansidhe and back-up from Gentleman Johnny Marcone, the Better Future Society, and the White Court. No help at all there. And of course you’re still at it, right?”

At least she had the grace to look slightly abashed, but the dam had been blown wide open. He couldn’t stop the flood of emotions now.

“You have no fucking clue what it’s like to be completely without help. Do you know how many Wardens I’ve lost since this shit started? Six. All younger than twenty-five, all Wardens for less than a year. They send me the new recruits because I’m best at training them, because I’ve ‘only’” — he curled his fingers in air quotes around the word — “lost six in two years. The youngest was killed when he came to L.A. to cover for me when I was in the hospital.”

His chest swelled painfully. Jason Davis had been run through by a fucking machete the weekend after his nineteenth birthday.

“I don’t know what it’s like in Chicago, but the Fomor on the West Coast figured out they can be most effective if they target Wardens. I was ambushed by more than twenty of them and their fucking servitors, and they used two kids as bait. I broke my back, but those kids died because I couldn’t save them.”

His voice cracked on the word _died_. He would never forget hearing the news in the hospital. It was the first thing he’d asked when he’d woken up, and he hadn’t wanted to speak to anyone for a long time afterward. Nothing else had seemed important after that, even the pain in his back.

“By the time I returned to action eight months later, I’d lost another Warden and over a dozen kids had been taken. My shiny Warden sword has killed more Fomor and saved more people than the Ragged Lady or Harry Fucking Dresden, so don’t you _dare_ make cracks about the Wardens and act like you’ve got the fucking moral high ground. If I lose my cloak, people will die, and I refuse to let that happen because one night I decided to fuck the Winter Lady!”

He stopped, panting, licked his lips, and tasted salt. Only then did he notice the tears streaking down his cheeks. He wiped his face roughly and glared at the floor, and that was when he realized he was standing, stark naked and flaccid, in the middle of the Winter Lady’s bedroom. Crying.

He dearly wished he could teleport into his clothes and far away from here, but real magic wasn’t nearly as awesome as it was in _Harry Potter_. His entire body flushed in shame.

On the plus side, at least he wasn’t cold.

“So much pain,” Molly said softly.

His head snapped up. “Can you –?” _Dios_ , was he hurting her again?

She shook her head. “I don’t have to.”

She started across the room toward him, graceful and lovely in her nakedness. He felt like a little kid’s refrigerator drawing next to Botticelli’s _The Birth of Venus_.

“Carlos,” she said, taking his face in her pale, slender hands. “ _Amorcito_.”

He closed his eyes and tried to suppress an outbreak of goosebumps. No woman had ever called him that before tonight – except his family, of course, but that was entirely different. He’d thought the first time she said it was just a fluke, something cute she decided to do to make him feel less embarrassed about saying it himself. But she’d said it again.

She brushed his cheeks with her thumb and kissed away his tears. Then she rested her forehead against his.

He opened his eyes and found himself gazing into hers.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, “what happened to those children. It’s not your fault what’s happening in your city. It’s not your fault when your Wardens get killed. You’re doing the best you can. You’ve saved so many people.”

He shook his head. “My best isn’t good enough."

“Oh, _amorcito_.” His heart leapt as she said it a third time. “No one’s ever is.”

He collapsed into her arms, which enveloped him like an old, familiar blanket. He buried his face in her shoulder and let the tears flow freely, all the anger and sadness and guilt and heartbreak leeching from him like a long-infected wound being drained. He bared his heart and soul to her, grasping her like a lifeline, sobbing until he couldn’t breathe.

She rocked him, held him, rubbed his back and whispered comforting words to him. For the first time in ages — perhaps in his entire life — he felt truly safe, comfortable and warm in the last place he’d expected.

The arms of Winter.


	7. Chapter 7

Carlos wasn’t sure how long he stood there, naked and crying, in the arms of the Lady of the Winter Court of the Sidhe. He only knew that by the time his sobbing had ebbed, he felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted, not only from his shoulders, but his chest, his back, his entire body.

He’d known he was barely holding himself together. It had been obvious by his shorter temper with both his family and his Wardens, each of which brought its own distinct guilt; his cynical, snarky comments, harsher and more caustic than they’d ever been previously; and his preference for and yet inability to cope with being alone. He’d been finding it more difficult to sleep without help — whiskey was his drug of choice, tequila if he’d had a particularly rough day of fighting Fomor — and nearly impossible, once he was asleep, to get through the night without waking up in a cold sweat from one of the nightmares in his mind’s rapidly growing Favorites playlist. He’d struggled to keep up his cocky grin, which had always been his first, last, and best coping mechanism.

But even he hadn’t realized just how close he’d been to breaking completely. Not until Molly Carpenter had set him off, and instead of kicking him out or leaving him to deal with his shit alone, she’d opened her arms and her heart, offered her ear to listen and her shoulder to cry on.

The craziest part of it was, he didn’t even feel embarrassed. All he felt was light, like he’d blow away if a cool winter breeze wafted in his direction.

And all she did was continue to hold him. He wasn’t sure when she’d stopped murmuring comforting words in his ear, but right now she held him tight, rubbing his back in that soothing way he only associated with his mother and _abuela._

When his gasping sobs had settled into only slightly quick, irregular breaths, she spoke again, whispering into his ear without moving or letting him go.

“I’m sorry about the Warden crack. You’re a good person, Carlos. I know you would never —”

His diaphragm spasmed in a breath that was almost a sob, threatening to start heaving again as he said, “But I have.”

He knew that by confessing, he would lose her. Her crack about his shiny Warden sword might have been cruel, but it was real. She’d been upset and angry, yes, but in his experience that only made people more honest, not less. There was no way, given her history with the Wardens and the White Council, that she could forgive what he was about to tell her.

But he refused to let her think that he was somehow better or morally superior to the rest of the Wardens. He wouldn’t lie to her anymore, allow her to imagine that he was a good man when he wasn’t.

“It was a couple years ago. Kid from South Central L.A.”

He spoke into her shoulder; he couldn’t bear to see the look on her face as he told her. What he imagined was awful enough. Her only reaction to his words was to cease rubbing his back. Otherwise, she didn’t move or even tense, just held him as she had for the past several minutes.

“I got a report of black magic. A poor Latino kid named Pedro. Sixteen. Single mom, younger sister. Broke the Fourth Law to get his mom to stop nagging and his sister to stop annoying him. Just being a teenager. But he was stronger than he knew. His sister was young, and her mind would heal, but his mom … she was insane by the time I heard anything about it.”

His soulgaze with the mother flashed across his mind, and the tears started to fall again.

“I tried to help him like Harry helped you,” he sobbed. “I offered to take him on as an apprentice and vouch for him before the Council. But he didn’t want it. The black magic had corrupted him too much. I still fought for him at the trial, but they hardly deliberated at all. And because I brought him in, I had to —”

He buried his face in her neck and tried to block out the image of Pedro’s head covered by the black bag, the ease with which his sword severed Pedro’s neck, the sound of Pedro gasping his last, Pedro’s head hitting the floor. And the blood … blood everywhere …

A cry escaped his lips. “I killed him. It could’ve been me, if my mentor hadn’t found me. If I hadn’t known what was right and wrong. It could’ve been —”

He couldn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. Her arms tensed around him. She wasn’t an idiot.

He’d thought of her when he’d made the offer to Pedro. He’d thought of her when he’d defended him in front of the Council and when the verdict came down. He’d thought of her as his sword — a thin, willow sword, created to slash and stab, not to chop — sliced through muscle, tendon, and bone like butter. He’d thought of her as someone took the body away, as he stood there, catatonic and numb, until Ebenezar McCoy had placed a gentle but strong hand on his shoulder and asked, “Ever had moonshine, boy? I find it works best for days like this.”

He’d thought of her as one of the members of the Senior Council got him far too drunk in near-complete silence, as though the old man knew exactly what he was going through.

“You did good today, son,” McCoy had said at last.

“Not good enough,” he’d slurred back. “If I’d just —”

“You’re young,” the old wizard said. “Too young to learn one of the hardest lessons: you can’t win them all. You can’t save everyone.”

“Harry would have,” he said softly. Grief seared across his heart. He’d been too busy fighting the Fomor to allow himself to wallow, but he missed Harry Dresden’s reliably constant, snarky, insane crusade for justice more than he’d ever admit aloud. He’d never told the wise-ass, but Harry was the type of wizard Carlos had always wanted to be.

McCoy tossed back a full tumbler of whatever it was they were drinking in a swift, practiced motion, and Carlos saw his face twist in anguish. When the old man spoke, his voice was rough.

“That boy was too foolish to ever learn that lesson, and he paid for it. Don’t make the same mistake he did.”

He’d thought of Harry then, and of Molly. He’d wondered where she was, if she was alive, if Harry had done her any favors by saving her. And he’d promised himself to try to internalize the lesson McCoy had said was so important.

But he’d never succeeded. Pedro’s face haunted his dreams, and so did Molly’s. He thought of her often.

He didn’t tell her that now, though. She didn’t need to hear his pathetic excuses. As her arms tensed around him, he knew that he’d thrown away any shot he might have had with her. After hearing what he’d done, she would never take him into her bed, could never love him like he so badly needed, and which Karrin’s speech had led him to desperately crave.

He squeezed his eyes shut and readied himself for the onslaught. For her to push, to slap, to scream and yell, to sling hateful, deserved slurs at him and blast him with the full force and power of Winter.

But she didn’t.

Instead, to his surprise, she drew him closer and held him tighter. After a silent moment that stretched into centuries, during which he thought his heart might explode from his chest, she spoke.

“As the Ragged Lady, I broke the First Law. A lot.” Her voice was quiet and a little unsteady. “They were bad people. Mobsters, dirty cops, kidnappers, rapists, murderers. They deserved it. Their deaths saved people. But I killed them, and I did it with magic. I still see their faces sometimes when I close my eyes to sleep.”

His mind whirred as it tried to process what she’d said. She’d heard his confession and raised him one of her own, admitting to a Warden of the White Council that she’d broken one of the Laws of Magic. Repeatedly. Not that he could do anything about it now, even if he wanted to, but the fact remained that she hadn’t pushed him away or hurled hateful words at him. She’d only held him tighter and told him she understood his pain. Understood _him_.

“You don’t … hate me?” he asked.

She made an odd hiccuping noise and gave him an extra tight squeeze. “I could never, ever hate you. You’re clearly doing enough of that for the both of us.”

He let out a single-syllable chuckle at that, and she began to rub his back again.

“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of,” she said. “Things we’d go back and change if we could. But we can’t. We just have to go on the best we can.”

His body melted into hers. She didn’t hate him. She’d said she never could. Never _ever_.

The air around him chilled suddenly, and his skin broke out into goosebumps.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, her voice hard. “You saved me. And you tried to save that boy. No, I hate the Council for sentencing him to death, and for making you do it. Those bastards. Wasn’t there someone else?”

In spite of the shiver that shot through him at her cold anger, he couldn’t help but feel warm inside that it was on his behalf.

“There wasn’t,” he said. “I knew that.”

“You defended him when he didn’t want it, knowing that you’d be the one to execute him when you failed?” She moved her hand from his back to cradle his head and began to rock him like a small child. The climate of the room seemed to return to normal. “That takes a special kind of courage, _amorcito_.”

He shivered as the endearment rolled naturally off her tongue. Even after everything he’d confessed, she cared for him enough to use it. And she’d said he was brave.

“I’m so sorry for that crack about your sword,” she said. “Sometimes I get so angry, especially when it comes to the Council, and I lash out, usually at people I care about. I can’t even blame it on Winter. I’ve always been that way.”

He heard her theme, the low, ominous strings building until they exploded at erratic intervals, and he knew in his soul that she was right. That part of her had nothing to do with Winter. Only Molly.

“It seems like it might have helped you in the end, but I still hate myself for hurting you. You probably hate me, but —”

“I could never, ever hate you,” he murmured into her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Of course he forgave her. He loved her.

He grimaced and swallowed those idiotic words and foolish thoughts. He couldn’t possibly _love_ her. He barely knew her. And she was a fucking faerie queen. Her league was so far out of his own he couldn’t see it if he tried.

But no one had ever held him like this, made him feel like this, understood him like this before.

“Oh, Carlos,” she said. “Harry Fucking Dresden really fucked us both over, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Fuck him.”

He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but there was a part of him that resented Harry for doing what he did, and then getting killed and letting the rest of the supernatural world pick up his mess. Sure, there were no more Red Court vamps, but so many more awful creatures had filled the vacuum that Carlos wasn’t sure it was actually better. The worst part was, he felt guilty for hating Harry, his _friend_ , when the man had saved his life numerous times, and especially after hearing earlier that evening just how much the man had sacrificed.

“There’s a lot of us,” Molly said. “Everyone in the B.F.S.”

“The White Council for sure,” he said. “The Wardens especially.”

“We could form a club. And get jackets.”

“They’d be big, black dusters that make us look way more badass than we actually are.”

She laughed at that, and so did he. It felt good to laugh, to share his resentments with someone who got it. Who got _him_.

When their laughs died away, she said, “If you want to leave, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Something in his chest throbbed. “It’s not about what I want.”

“If you need to, then. I won’t stop you.” She pulled back from him and met his eyes for the first time since he’d started sobbing. “But, if I may, I’d like to make a case for why your logic is unsound.”

Cold. Rational. Logical.

He smirked. “Go ahead, Mr. Spock.”

At that, her eyes lit up like a town square’s Christmas tree, but otherwise she didn’t respond. “If what you say about your work as a Warden is absolutely true, and I don’t believe it is — I think that you do far more than you’ll admit or are even aware of. If even half of what you say is true, the White Council will never take away your cloak. They need you.”

“If they think I’ve been compromised —”

She cocked her eyebrow so comically high that he couldn’t help but think it was a Spock impression. If their topic of conversation had been anything else, he might have laughed.

“If they thought I made a bargain and owed you something, they might think —”

This time she rolled her eyes so dramatically he thought she might injure herself. “Harry Fucking Dresden owed a debt to the Leanansidhe for something she did for him ages ago, and then it was transferred to Mab. Did you know that?”

His jaw dropped. He most definitely had not known that. And honestly, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

“And that was before they made him a Warden. Whether or not they knew about it is kind of moot because they needed him. Just like they need you now.”

He inhaled in order to protest, but she put a finger to his lips.

“I’m not finished. The Winter Court and the White Council are not at war. This wouldn’t be violating the Accords. Frankly, nothing short of you intentionally breaking one of the Laws would be enough for them to take your cloak away. And maybe not even then,” she added.

“That’s not true,” he said softly, even as he wondered if she was right.

Her eyes roved up and down his face until she finally sighed and pushed away from him. He shivered at the sudden cold that came, ironically, with the retreat of Winter.

“But you’re not logical, are you?” she asked.

He rocked back at that, suddenly feeling very naked and self-conscious. Coming from her, that hurt.

“I don’t mean that you’re stupid,” she said quickly. “You’re intelligent and quick-witted and brilliant at tactics and strategies. But your decisions are not based on logic. They’re based on emotion. If you were truly logical, you’d have had second thoughts long before now.” She smiled. “You’re much more Kirk than Spock.”

He tipped his head in acknowledgment, allowing just a hint of a smirk. She wasn’t wrong.

“Obviously logic is the wrong way to convince you. So I’ll explain why you should search your feelings instead.”

He wasn’t sure if that was a _Star Wars_ reference or not. Back when she was Harry’s apprentice, he’d repeatedly heard her call her younger siblings _the Jawas_ , so he knew she was a fan, but he wasn’t ready to out himself as the total nerd he was by assuming she made a reference when she didn’t. He’d learned that lesson the hard way too many times in school.

Instead, he took a tried-and-true safe route — a test that would sound innocent to someone not looking for it. “And what will I know to be true?”

When her lips quirked upward, he knew he’d read her right. Damn. How was it possible for her to keep getting hotter? She was perfect for him.

Her eyes glittered like icicles in the sun, and she said, “Whatever happened to” — here she shifted into what was clearly meant to be an impression of him from earlier in the evening — “‘I’m kind of a big deal with the Wardens’?”

As impressions went, it was actually pretty good.

“That was a joke, Lady.”

She shook her head. “You intended it a joke. It wasn’t one. You _are_ a big deal. I know it feels awful, but the reason they haven’t sent you help is because they can’t spare it and they know you don’t need it. The reason they send you the new recruits is because you’re the best at training them. You’re excellent at what you do. Plus, I bet you’ve never broken a rule or disobeyed an order in your life.”

Well, there was that one time he was arrested for sedition when he tried to break his fellow Wardens out of prison, but because the Red Court was behind all that intrigue and the Council looked dumb as shit in retrospect, everyone liked to pretend it never happened, so it wasn’t any sort of mark on his otherwise excellent record. In fact, it had actually gained him more respect among some of the older Wardens, even if they hadn’t agreed with his methods. 

Damn, even when he deliberately broke the rules it didn’t take. He couldn’t argue with her if he wanted to.

“You’re a goody-two-shoes, Carlos. Harry Fucking Dresden has gotten away with so much because he’s actually done things wrong. I think you’d be surprised by what you could get away with.” She simpered, and her voice rose half an octave to a sickly sweet, seductive tone. “Don’t you want to be a bad boy? Just a little bit?” She made a tiny space between her forefinger and thumb.

He did. God, he really did. He was so fucking tired of doing everything right and getting no damned thanks for it. He’d never seriously considered breaking one of the Laws or anything, but he couldn’t deny the desire to be a bit less of a good little Catholic boy. That was why he’d taken such a liking to Harry. And, if he was honest with himself, to Molly.

She smiled as though she could read his thoughts, like she knew she was getting to him. “And you know what? I think it’s none of the Council’s God-damned business what you do with your nights. For nearly a decade, you’ve spent your days _and_ nights doing your job: protecting people and the Laws of Magic. They already dictate most of your life. Why should they tell you how to spend your free time?”

He clenched his fists at his sides. “What free time?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Who are they to tell you that you can’t decompress? This evening, you snapped at Karrin just for asking about your personal life. Earlier, you told me you didn’t like the person you were turning into — caustic and cynical and hopeless. It’s not just because of the pain. It’s the immense stress of everything you’re dealing with. You need, you _deserve_ , to unwind. And having some amazing orgasms is a great way to do it.”

He knew exactly what she was doing. Hell, she’d outright told him she was going to appeal to his emotions. But damn if it wasn’t working. She was right. He did deserve to relax, even if it was just for one night.

“I want this,” she said softly. “I’m under a lot of stress, too.”

Without warning, she let out a growl and put several feet between them, pacing rapidly left and right.

“Do you know how many hot Sidhe men and women have been throwing themselves at me for the past year?”

He shook his head in wide-eyed silence. He didn’t even want to think about how many perfect, attractive, sexually experienced men — and women, he thought with a gulp as the blood rushed to his cock again — that Molly could choose from.

“ _All_ of them.” She continued her frantic pacing. “They all want a taste of the new Winter Lady. Maeve was a fucking sex addict, and she used to bargain sex for favors. And they can tell just by looking at me that I’m inexperienced, and that turns them on even more.”

Boy, did he know what that was like. Lara Raith blurting out his virgin status right in front of Harry was, hands down, the most embarrassing moment of his entire life.

“And some of them are nice,” she said, slowing a little. “Some of them are sweet and kind and seem genuinely interested in me, and it’s tempting. I could have any one of them, or all of them. But it would just be empty sex.” She stopped and faced him. “I don’t want that. I’ve never had sex before, and I want it to mean something. I know that probably seems stupid —”

“It’s not stupid at all,” he said at once.

The longing in her eyes made his heart — and his cock — ache.

She closed her eyes for a moment. “I know.” Her voice was soft, but when she opened her eyes again, all he saw was determination. “That’s why I want this. I want my first time to be with someone I trust. Someone I care about. Someone I —”

She stopped abruptly and flushed, looking away. His heart skipped a beat. Had she almost said … ?

“You’re a good man.” She started to walk toward him. “You’re funny and kind and utterly selfless. You’re killing yourself to save your city, and you risked everything to help me. And you care about me. You’re a virgin, and tonight you decided you wanted to have sex with _me_.”

She was right in front of him now, in all her beautiful naked glory. The only thing keeping them apart was his now fully erect penis.

But all she did was reach out and caress his cheek. “And you’re hurting. You need this just as much as I do.”

She leaned in and kissed him, gently, and as she did his cock brushed up against her. A shiver shot through him, and she started to kiss down his neck, his chest, across his numerous and various scars. Every caress of her lips made his stomach flutter with excitement and something else he couldn’t identify, until she was on her knees in front of him.

She kissed down his pubic bone, around and up the hardness of his shaft. Then she looked up at him with eyes that sparkled like the northern lights, full of need and desire, not just for sex, but for _him_. And without breaking their gaze, she took his tip into her mouth.

He let his head fall back with a groan, full of that same need, and he felt her smile around him. _Dios_ , it had been so long since a woman had done that. Not since Yuki; his latest forays into dating never made it this far. For the past decade, the closest he ever got was when he jacked himself off.

But this … this was something else entirely. Her tongue flicked back and forth across his tip, and as she started to move her mouth up and down, his cock ached for release.

So it was only by summoning a restraint he wasn’t aware he possessed that he jerked away from her and hissed, “No.”

The sting of rejection flashed across her face for only an instant.

Then she was on her feet, turning away from him, saying, “Okay. I’ll take you home —”

He grabbed her by the elbow, spun her around so that she landed in his open arms, and pulled her close until their foreheads were touching.

“Cool it, drama queen,” he said with a smirk. “I didn’t mean no to everything. Your powers of persuasion are most impressive.” He raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice a few notches on the last two words.

She grinned, and he was overcome by a desperate need to kiss her.

Instead, he stroked her cheek and said, “That’s not how I want to come, _amorcita_.”

Before he could say another word, she threw her arms around him and kissed him. To his own surprise — and hers, if her squeal was anything to go by — he swept her into his arms, bridal style, and proceeded to carry her back to the bed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another content warning, just so we're all on the same page: E for EXPLICIT!
> 
> And a giant thank you to those of you who are (still) reading!

Carlos tread carefully for the few steps back to the bed — no need to repeat the mortifying threshold incident — and managed to get them there unscathed. He hopped onto the bed and straddled her.

Molly’s long, pale hair splayed around her head like a halo, some of it flowing down and covering her breasts and torso, which rose and fell with her quickened breaths. She looked up at him, face flush with passion, eyes flashing with expectant desire. She was lovely and perfect and, for one of the few times in his entire life, Carlos was absolutely speechless.

“Are you okay?” she asked breathlessly. Her pretty white brow furrowed slightly, and he felt a pang that its alluring symmetry was marred because of him.

He nodded, swallowing, trying to make his mouth form words. “You’re so beautiful.”

Her eyes widened and brimmed with tears, and it was his turn to frown.

“What’s wrong?” Had he said the wrong thing? He was such an idiot sometimes.

“Nothing,” she said, wiping the now falling tears from her cheeks. “It’s just — no one’s ever said that to me before.”

He lowered himself down until he was leaning on one forearm, his bare skin touching hers, but without placing his full weight on her. With his free hand, he brushed her soft, silken hair off of her chest and out of her face and caressed her cheek. Then he kissed her gently. It made his stomach flutter.

“That seems like an enormous oversight,” he whispered. “If not an outright crime. Every woman should hear someone call her beautiful at some point. You’re beautiful, Molly.”

She smiled and closed her eyes, though a few tears still managed to escape. “Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you. I’m the winner here.”

She laughed silently, and he kissed her again, longer this time. It started just as gentle as the first one, but as it continued, it grew more heated, more passionate. Her hands started to roam all over him — his face, his hair, his neck, his back, his ass, his thighs. He brought his free hand down stroke her nipple, and she inhaled sharply.

She began to thrust against him, and he found his hand moving down to her hips. He was so hard it hurt, and he ached to come, but he hadn’t been lying when he said he wanted to come inside her.

He popped up onto his knees.

And yet, he hesitated. “I’ve never done this before.”

She looked up at him, face filled with uncertainty. “Me, neither.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Me, neither.” Her smile was a nervous one. “Just … go slow.”

“Okay.”

But, heart pounding so hard he thought he might pass out, he lowered himself again, going back to what he knew: he propped himself up on his elbows and caressed her breasts, kissing her everywhere.

Her hips continued their thrusts; he met her with his own, his shaft rubbing up and down against her, but not entering her. And yet he ached to be inside her.

“Now,” she hissed.

He swallowed hard. “Are — are you sure?”

He didn’t know who he was really asking.

“Yes,” she moaned. “Please.”

He sat up again, but he froze. He wanted this, needed to be inside her. So why was he so damned nervous?

“You’re — you’re sure?”

He definitely knew who he was asking now, and it wasn’t Molly.

As if she could read his mind — or his voice, or hell, maybe his emotions — she raised her head to look at him, forehead wrinkled deeply.

“Are you?” she asked.

His heart seemed to stop. Yes, he wanted it. No — he wanted _her_ , and he wanted her so badly he thought he might explode. He wanted to be inside her, to be as close to her as it was possible to be to another person.

“Yes,” he rasped. “I am.”

She tossed her head, flipping some of her long hair out of her face. “Then, Carlos Ramirez, as sexy as I find your persistence in asking for permission, if you do not put your dick inside me in the next ten seconds, I swear to God I will do it myself.”

“Okay.” He nodded repeatedly. “Okay. Okay.”

Breathe, he told himself. He could do this.

He grabbed his cock with a shaking hand, took a final, steadying breath, positioned his tip right at her opening, and —

“Wait!” She suddenly sat up, hands out in a very clear _stop_ gesture.

“Are you kidding me right now?” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“I know, I know! I’m sorry, just a second.” She opened a drawer in her bedside table and rummaged through it. He saw several — as in, more than five — toys in varying colors, shapes, and sizes, including one that looked so complicated he was honestly unsure of its intended use.

“Here,” she said, apparently finding what she was looking for and holding up a large gray tube. She unscrewed the cap and squeezed a watery dollop onto her fingers. “It’s water-based, so it’s not going to feel all sticky, which, trust me, is not a great feeling. But it’ll make things a lot smoother. Come here.”

He inched toward her, and she began to rub the lube onto his cock. Feeling her long, slender fingers caressing him made him even harder, which he hadn’t thought was possible at this point.

To keep from grabbing her by the shoulders, throwing her to the bed, and having his way with her right then, lube be damned, he forced himself to focus on something else.

“So … you have, er, quite the bench there.”

He nodded to the drawer, and she blushed furiously.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to see —”

“Don’t be sorry — whoa.” A tingling sensation began to accompany her fingers rubbing up and down his shaft.

“Oh, yeah, I meant to warn you.” She presented the tube to him like Vanna White. “It’s warming! And tingly.”

“I noticed.” He gulped. “Almost done?”

“Almost. And — yeah, about the —”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, gritting his teeth as his cock grew painfully hard. “If my sisters have taught me anything, it’s that a woman should always have a full and varied bench to call upon when she needs it.”

She screwed the cap back on the tube and placed it on the table, then lay back down. “They sound like my kind of gals. How many do you have?”

“Five.”

Her eyes widened. “ _Five_ sisters? Any brothers?”

“Nope.”

“Wow. What’s that like?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to focus on his boner. “Can we please not talk about my sisters? Or else I’m going to be hearing their voices in my head, critiquing me and giving notes.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “That’s what it’s like.”

She sat up and kissed him, successfully banishing any thoughts from his mind but her.

“Okay,” she whispered. “For really real now.”

She lay back, pulling him with her. He grabbed his cock, and she placed her hand on top of his. Their lips met, and together they guided his tip into her.

They let out simultaneous moans, breaking the kiss, but her obvious pleasure emboldened him. He eased his way in, slowly, pulling out and then thrusting just a little deeper into her each time.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” she whimpered, and she started to move against him.

He continued to slide into her, a little more with each thrust. Never in his life had he been more aroused. She was so tight around him, and he couldn’t imagine a more wonderful feeling.

“ _Dios_ ,” he gasped when the base of his cock hit her pubic bone. He was all the way inside her, and somehow it didn’t feel like enough.

Her eyes fluttered open. “I actually prefer that to Molly, so if you wouldn’t mind continuing to call me that —”

“Peace, I will stop your mouth,” he said, and he kissed her.

She broke it almost immediately. “Shakespeare? Aren’t you just full of surprises.”

He grinned. He couldn’t believe she’d recognized the reference — he’d made it a few times on various dates, and the women always looked at him like he’d grown a second head. In his mind, it was one of the most romantic things the Bard had ever written.

“I keep telling you I’m brilliant. Why are you so surprised?” He slowly began to thrust again — almost all the way out, and then all the way in, over and over. “Name the play.”

“Mmm, nothing hotter than pop quizzes about Shakespeare while having sex,” she said.

Her breathing quickened, and she sped up the pace.

“It’s only fair,” he said, kissing her again. “You gave me one earlier, and then the word association, and those were about much less sexy topics. But hey, if you don’t know the answer —”

“ _Much Ado About Nothing_ ,” she said. “Benedick says it to Beatrice at the end of the play, right before he kisses her.”

He thrust harder. Baseball and _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ and Shakespeare? He would never find a woman more perfect for him.

“Well done,” he said. “Most people don’t know that one.”

“You’d be surprised how useful Shakespeare is in my new job.” She was panting now, and her hands were roaming again. “Good for research.”

He cocked an eyebrow. He was sweating, hot all over, and all for her. “ _Much Ado_ doesn’t have faeries in it.”

“Well, when I come across my favorites, I always give them another read.”

He kissed her again, and the pressure in his cock grew until he was too close, far too close, to the edge.

He stopped, breathing hard, and allowed some of his weight to rest on her.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Just need to take a break. I’m, um —”

He suddenly felt embarrassed at his lack of stamina. He should have been able to last longer than this. But he knew that once he came, he would be finished, and he never, ever wanted to be finished. He wanted this to last forever.

“That’s all right,” she said, smiling. “This is nice.”

He laid his forehead against hers and returned her smile. “Yeah.”

They lay there for a while, bare, hot skin touching bare, hot skin, and again he felt that, although he was all the way inside her, it wasn’t enough. He swallowed those three stupidly romantic words again. He was as close to her — both physically and metaphorically — as he’d ever been to anyone, and yet, in that moment, all he wanted — both physically and metaphorically —  was to be even closer.

So he sat up, somehow managing to bring her with him without pulling out, and pulled her onto his lap.

She gave a small gasp. “Ooh. I like this position.”

“So do I.” He kissed her.

He could have sat there, inside her, as much of them touching as physically possible but still — _still_ — not close enough, for the entire night, year, century, forever. But now that she was on top of him, she was in control, and she started to ease up and down him, slowly at first, but growing faster.

Then, without warning, without breaking their contact, without him even realizing what had happened until it was over — even later, when he tried to remember, he couldn’t figure out how she’d done it so smoothly and quickly — she spun them around and pushed him onto his back, pinning his arms at his sides.

He groaned in agonizing pleasure, his cock aching for her, and she obliged. She rode him hard, her thrusts quickening, and he felt the pressure build again. But she didn’t stop, and he didn’t want her to.

She leaned backward slightly and started to moan, but her arms were long and she kept his pinned to the bed. He found he didn’t mind — he was more than happy to cede her control.

Her hips sped up, her moans grew louder, and that just made the pressure in his groin build more quickly. She was so hot, and he wanted her to come again, too.

He met her thrust for thrust. The pressure swelled until he passed the point of no return. Her moans intensified, louder, more urgent, more insistent, and it was her enjoyment that finally pushed him over the edge.

His entire body exploded in pleasure as he came inside her. His mind went blank with the sheer euphoria, and every muscle in his body seized, even as he continued to thrust, riding out the most intense orgasm of his life. It seemed to last an eternity.

When the ecstasy finally ebbed, he collapsed back onto the bed, completely spent. Only then did he feel that his cheeks were damp.

And that Molly was still thrusting.

He was okay with that. She deserved to come, too. It wasn’t her fault that he didn’t have much stamina. Although, in his defense, it had been a very long time, and he’d been under considerable stress lately. He’d really, really needed that.

The only problem was that he was completely spent, every part of him — _every_ part of him — limper than the severed tentacle-like limb of a Fomor. (Which he’d learned the hard way was not as limp as he’d previously assumed, and he had the scars to show for it.)

She continued to thrust, faster and faster, his arms still pinned almost painfully to the bed. With every thrust, as she pulled back, a little more of him withdrew from her. But since he was no longer hard, when she pushed forward, he didn’t slide back into her; she just slammed against him, into his now flaccid penis.

At first, he didn’t feel it; the endorphins had upped his pain threshold. But as he came down from the orgasm, they started to wear off, just as they did at the end of a battle, and his nerves slowly returned to life. Every jab of her hips was a little more painful, until he was no longer inside her at all.

“Molly,” he rasped, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

He tried to move his arms, to push her away, but they were stuck in her vice-like grip.

One particularly strong slam of her hips sent a lightning bolt all the way up his spine, and his back pain returned in a tidal wave.

He cried out in agony. She’d been right when she’d said he’d feel it tenfold when it returned; he couldn’t remember it being this bad since the hospital, except then he’d been loaded up on painkillers.

“Molly, stop,” he begged.

But she couldn’t hear him. She was moaning loudly, almost screaming, and though her eyes were open, she didn’t see him. They weren’t even Molly’s eyes. They were still blue, but now they were almost feline, the pupils vertical slits instead of round. A darkness clouded them, reminiscent of an oncoming blizzard.

The air in the room grew suddenly arctic — or maybe he was only now feeling it. He shivered, and not just with the cold. His arms were pinned to the bed in her inhumanly strong grip. He had no weapons, no foci, and the orgasm had spent all that was left of his energy. She was a fucking faerie queen; at his best he couldn’t take her, and right now he doubted he could even perform the little raindrop spell he shamelessly used to impress his nieces.

He was, quite literally, naked and unarmed, in immense physical pain, and completely out of energy — and ideas.

And Winter showed no signs of slowing down.

But he was a fucking Warden of the White Council, for God’s sake. You don’t get to be youngest regional commander in the history of the Wardens by collecting bottle caps. Actually, in his case, he’d gotten there by miraculously outliving hundreds of older Wardens, shooting his superior, and riding a dinosaur into battle, but now he had nearly a decade of experience. Except for the Senior Council, he was one of world’s leading combat experts. He was not going down without a fight. Not now, when he’d only just lost his virginity.

He closed his eyes and took a moment to focus away as much of the pain as possible. He’d had lots of practice at that in the past couple of years, so it didn’t take more than ten seconds.

When the pain had receded to a bearable level, he opened his eyes and took in the woman trying to break the bed and his hips with the force of her thrusts. Frankly, short of getting sexed to death by a White Court vamp, this was probably one of the best ways to go, and most certainly in his line of work. But he wasn’t ready to go just yet — and the world wasn’t ready to lose such a good-looking, brilliant, talented wizard of his caliber.

Plus, Molly would never forgive herself.

That was when it hit him — he couldn’t even begin to fight the Winter Lady, but he wouldn’t have to fight Molly. He’d listened to her soul; she wasn’t all Winter. Not yet.

“Molly,” he said gently. It was difficult, to make himself heard over her while also trying to sound non-threatening, but he thought he got pretty close.

Nothing.

“Molly, stop,” he repeated, infusing his voice with as much warmth as possible, in spite of his pain and her moans. “ _Amorcita_ , please.”

She seemed to falter; her thrusts slowed.

“ _Amorcita_ ,” he said again, summoning the sight of her beautiful nakedness, the sound of her soul’s theme, the feel of her soft skin and her tightness around him as they made love, the smell and taste of her as he’d made her come with his tongue. He took all of his emotions surrounding Molly and formed them into the beautiful Spanish endearment. “ _Amorcita._ Molly, my little love.”

She whimpered, and her grip on him loosened.

At that, he wrenched his wrists from her grasp, sat up, winced at the jolt of pain that shot up his back, took her face in his hands, and kissed her with all the passion he’d felt when she’d made a baseball pun, quoted _Star Wars,_ and gotten his Shakespeare reference. That kiss carried with it everything behind those three little words he could never say. He kissed her like it was his last chance. For all he knew, it was.

And by the grace of whatever entity controlled such things, it worked. She pulled away with a gasp and stared, eyes wide, and they were Molly’s eyes.

“Oh my God,” she said, Molly’s lovely blue eyes brimming with tears. “Oh, God, Carlos.”

She slumped against him, collapsing into arms that were ready and willing to receive her, and wept.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those of you (still) reading: I apologize for the nearly two-month wait. This is what I get for publishing before the story is finished. I thought I was ahead of the game, but this chapter was giving me a lot of trouble and went through several rewrites. It's long, though, so I hope that makes up for my absence. The final two chapters are written, and although they'll need some work, too, they won't need two months' of it.
> 
> Thank you for reading — I appreciate you all! Enjoy!
> 
> Previously, in _Cold Nights_ :
> 
> _He was, quite literally, naked and unarmed, in immense physical pain, and completely out of energy — and ideas._
> 
> _And Winter showed no signs of slowing down._
> 
> _But he was a fucking Warden of the White Council, for God’s sake._
> 
> _~~~_
> 
> _He couldn’t even begin to fight the Winter Lady, but he wouldn’t have to fight Molly. He’d listened to her soul; she wasn’t all Winter. Not yet._
> 
> _~~~_
> 
> _“_ Amorcita _,” he said again, summoning the sight of her beautiful nakedness, the sound of her soul’s theme, the feel of her soft skin and her tightness around him as they made love, the smell and taste of her as he’d made her come with his tongue. He took all of his emotions surrounding Molly and formed them into the beautiful Spanish endearment. "_ Amorcita. _Molly, my little love.”_
> 
> _She whimpered, and her grip on him loosened._
> 
> _At that, he wrenched his wrists from her grasp, sat up, winced at the jolt of pain that shot up his back, took her face in his hands, and kissed her with all the passion he’d felt when she’d made a baseball pun, quoted _Star Wars_ , and gotten his Shakespeare reference. That kiss carried with it everything behind those three little words he could never say. He kissed her like it was his last chance. For all he knew, it was._
> 
> _And by the grace of whatever entity controlled such things, it worked. She pulled away with a gasp and stared, eyes wide, and they were Molly’s eyes._
> 
> _“Oh my God,” she said, Molly’s lovely blue eyes brimming with tears. “Oh, God, Carlos.”_
> 
> _She slumped against him, collapsing into arms that were ready and willing to receive her, and wept._

Throughout more than a decade of Wardening, Carlos had been through his fair share of near-death experiences. He was more than familiar with the jolt of adrenaline, the simultaneous excitement and dread and regret that accompanied the moment when you realized you might not get out of this alive, that the only thing worth doing at this point might be sacrificing yourself and even that might be futile, that there might only be enough magic left coursing through your veins to go out with one hell of a death curse.

But as his adrenaline faded and his pulse returned to normal and his fear evolved into the familiar relief that his insane plan — because there was always an insane plan — had actually worked, he found himself feeling something foreign to his standard post-battle emotional aftermath.

Compassion.

He had always hated seeing people in pain. When his little sister Rosa had broken her wrist on the playground, he’d called his then-new mentor, Raul, and tearfully explained the situation over the phone. The older wizard had come to the restaurant to explain to Carlos in person that bones had to heal all on their own, no matter how much Carlos wanted to help his sister. Kind man that he was, Raul told Carlos that wanting to help people was a good thing, and that magic could help people in other ways, and that he would teach Carlos how to do it.

The “Magic can’t fix everything” lesson had been nearly as difficult to accept as McCoy’s “You can’t win them all,” especially when he got older and realized that the worst pain in life wasn’t physical.

Carlos might have been almost sexed to death by the Winter Lady, but Molly Carpenter was the one sobbing in his arms, and he would have given anything to take her sadness away, even if it meant adding to his own.

But no magic that he’d heard of could do that, so he did the best a mortal could: he held her close, stroked her hair, and rocked her, all the while whispering words of comfort to her.

Nothing he did seemed to help in the slightest. She sobbed into his chest until she gasped, and he grew worried she might hyperventilate.

He took her face in his hands and gave her a little shake. “Molly. Breathe.” He inhaled deeply through his nose. “In.” He exhaled through his mouth. “Out.” In again. “ _Inhala_.” Out again. “ _Exhala_.”

Carlos had been on the receiving end of enough racist comments about speaking English in America that he avoided any potential conflict by doing just that, even within his own family. The only times he spoke Spanish nowadays were when he needed to for his job — like when he was abroad on a mission — or when it slipped out during the heat of battle or … other things.

This was neither. _Inhala, exhala_  was his own inner mantra in times of fear or panic because it was what his _abuela_ had always said whenever anyone in his family was upset. It was what she’d said to Rosa when she’d broken her wrist and to him when he’d cried at not being able to help her.

Right now, for Molly, it fit, just like calling her _amorcita_ had. Except this time he wasn’t embarrassed at all because the Spanish seemed to calm her more than the English. He murmured it in her ear, and she breathed with him until her gasps finally began to recede.

“Car — los,” she hiccuped into his chest. “I’m sor — ry.”

“For what?” He raised her chin until their eyes met, though hers flicked away almost immediately, and smiled. “We just had some amazingly hot sex. As first times go, I’d give it at least a nine.”

“I — hurt you.” Her entire body spasmed with another hiccup.

“No, you didn’t.”

Magic might not have been able to take her pain away, but a little white lie could.

She drew away and lay her long, slender fingers across his forearms, aligning them with two sets of five bruises each.

For her, he summoned his cocky grin. He’d discovered over the years that, in addition to giving him confidence and relaxing others in social situations, it, too, was occasionally capable of relieving others’ pain.

“Oh, please. I get worse than that when my nieces race to tell me hello.”

Her breathing was mostly under control now, and she pushed away from him completely, pulling her knees to her chest.

“And people get little injuries from sex all the time,” he continued in the silence. “Scratches, bruises, hickeys. Once my sister Maria showed up to dinner with a sprained wrist and told everyone she fell in the shower, which was obvious bullshit. When I asked her about it later, she said she fell off the bed when she her husband were trying a new position.”

His incessant babbling, he’d found, didn’t usually take away others’ pain, but it often distracted him from his own.

“And anyway, they look worse than they feel. You’d be surprised how much your pain tolerance goes up when you deal with the kind of stuff I see on a regular —”

“Carlos.” She was facing completely away from him.

He scooted over and wrapped his arms around her from behind. She stiffened, so he rested his chin on her shoulder and whispered with a grin, “I liked it.”

That wasn’t a total lie. He _had_ liked it. It might not have happened the way he’d imagined his first time would go, but it was amazing nonetheless. Fantastic, even. Almost perfect.

Until the end. But that wasn’t her fault. Blaming her for losing control would have been hypocritical and unfair. She wasn’t herself at the time.

“ _Amorcita_.” He gave the R an extra little roll and widened his grin.

Her shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Don’t call me that.”

He jerked away from her as though he’d been burned.

“I think you should go,” she whispered.

“Is that what you want?” Only the hitch in his voice on the last word belied his outward sense of calm.

She buried her face in her knees, curling into a ball. “It’s not about what I want.”

When asked to describe it later, Carlos could only explain what he felt then as a sort of reverse _deja vu_ ; instead of a sense that he was reliving the past, he got the distinct impression that whatever decision he made in that moment would affect the rest of his life.

“In that case, no,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her head whipped to face him.

He gave as nonchalant a shrug as he could manage while meeting the blazing eyes of Winter.

“I don’t know about you, but losing my virginity took a lot out me, and I really don’t feel like getting dressed and going out in the cold again just so I can sleep alone in my tiny bed.”

He smoothed the sheets and rearranged the pillows fastidiously.

“Your bed is big and comfy, and to be honest, I was really looking forward to sleeping with you tonight. And waking up next to you tomorrow morning.”

He gave one of the pillows a little smack before laying down dramatically — tweaking his back in the process, but he didn’t let it show on his face — and pulling the covers halfway up his chest.

“If you want to sit over there and mope, go ahead. I’ll be over here getting cozy under the covers and reveling in the fact that I’m no longer White Court vamp bait.”

He wriggled into a slightly more comfortable position, folded his hands primly over his chest, and closed his eyes.

After a slow, silent five-count, he opened one eye.

She was gaping at him. He wondered if anyone had dared tell her _no_ in the past year and worried for a second that maybe he’d been a little hasty.

But when she saw him open his eye, the corners of her mouth twitched.

He opened his other eye, brought forth his cockiest — heh, cocky — grin, and stretched out his arm. “You know you want in on this. My snuggle game is almost as good as my tongue game.”

Her face twisted into something he didn’t quite recognize before she turned her back to him and lay down on the opposite side of the enormous bed, so far away that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to touch her without moving.

He withdrew his arm and tried not to be hurt. She was probably embarrassed and ashamed and angry at herself for losing control.

Though his brain understood the rationale, his heart didn’t. It spoke a different language than reason.

He didn’t say anything or even move from where he’d so deliberately placed himself; he only watched the back of her head as she curled into a fetal position.

“Why?” she whispered.

He rolled onto his side and spoke to her back. “Because I don’t want to go, and you need me to stay.”

She was silent for several of his quickened heartbeats.

“You don’t know what I _need_.” Her tone could have given penguins frostbite.

So he infused his with the gentle warmth of an L.A. winter. “I know that you don’t need to be left alone with your thoughts. I know that you don’t need me to run scared. And you definitely don’t need to kick me out of here like some plaything for Winter, to be discarded when it’s had its fun.”

As he used her own words against her, she stretched out, legs uncurling and a fist balling at her side. He thought he might have felt a cold draft.

He used it to chill his own words. “You are not Maeve.”

She froze.

“You lost control. But when you got it back, you stopped. Maeve wouldn’t have stopped until she was satisfied, and she wouldn’t be feeling like shit right now. You are Molly,” he said. “And I am not afraid of Molly.”

At that, she turned to face him, cheeks streaked with tears, eyes brimming with uncertainty and something else.

Hope.

He capitalized on her hesitation and rolled toward her across the enormous bed. He was actually able to make a full revolution with room to spare and came up with his cockiest grin, complete with jazz hands.

She let out a sobbing laugh — or maybe it was a laughing sob — and finally submitted to the Ramirez charm and his open arms. She buried her face in his chest, and when he felt a warm dampness on his skin a few seconds later, he only tightened his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

They lay in silence for a while until his stomach made a noise that would have been more at home on a farm.

She found it far funnier than she should have. “Typical man. Always thinking with your stomach or your dick.”

“Typical woman,” he said. “Always being judgy about it.”

She lifted her head and regarded him with a look that could have frozen the Sahara.

He threw up his hands in surrender. “Withdrawn.”

Her smile was almost mischievous. “I’d like to meet your sisters.”

The thought made Carlos’s blood run cold.

“Let’s go see what we can do about your stomach,” she said.

And instead of getting off on her side and walking around the bed to the door, she climbed on top of and over him, toward the other side of the bed.

The last thing he saw before everything went dark was her smiling down at him.

The last thing he felt was a white hot pain shooting up his back.

 

* * *

 

The first thing he felt before he opened his eyes were cool hands on his cheeks.

The first thing he heard was a woman’s voice saying his name.

“S’fine,” he mumbled automatically. “M’fine.”

“Carlos, can you hear me?”

The cool hands were on his forehead now, stroking his hair. It felt fantastic.

“M’fine,” he repeated.

“Then how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.”

A pause. “How —?”

He finally opened his eyes. Molly Carpenter lay next to him, naked, her fingers gently stroking his hair. Concern and confusion had replaced the smile he’d seen last.

All he wanted in that moment was to see it again.

“Magic.” He flashed his cocky grin and attempted to waggle his eyebrows mysteriously, even though the real answer was that, when holding up fingers to test someone, people nearly always held up two. “M’fine.”

Although he felt clammy and lightheaded and faintly nauseous, he pushed himself into a sitting position. The jolt of pain up his back was only about an eight this time, so instead of passing out again he just hissed a Spanish curse.

“Take it easy.” Molly tried to push him back down, but he resisted. “Where?”

“Not your fault,” he said through clenched teeth. He placed only the barest emphasis on _your_.

Her hands flew to her mouth. “Your back. Oh, Carlos — I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Now that there were no life-or-death situations or crying women to distract him from the pain, he heard the sharp edge creep back into his voice. “Midnight, pumpkin. Remember?”

She took his hand, staring at it intently. “Cinderella’s fairy godmother only gave her until midnight because she went to a ball.” She met his gaze and leaned in. “If you’re going to stay, the least your faerie god-lover can do is give you the rest of the night.”

He laughed. “I can’t decide if that’s the cheesiest or sexiest —”

She stopped his mouth with a kiss.

The moment their lips touched, a gentle ripple fluttered through him. His eyes drooped closed, his muscles relaxed, and the pain in his back melted away. He started to fall backwards, but she never let go, guiding him gently down to the bed.

When she finally broke the kiss, his entire body had become gelatinous. Unlike out on the sidewalk, he didn’t feel giddy or fully rested; he felt happily exhausted, like he always did right after coming. With a monumental effort, which he thought should have earned him some sort of prize, he forced his eyes open. He gave her a grateful, sleepy smile.

She returned it, though hers was tinged with sadness. “If it comes back again, please tell me. As long as you’re here, I’ll make sure you’re not in pain.”

“In that case, can I stay forever?”

He might not have felt giddy, but he was definitely smiling like a doofus. Staying here, with Molly, forever, sounded like his most brilliant idea ever, and he’d had some pretty great ones. It would be perfect — he could kiss her whenever he wanted and hear her musical laugh always.

She was stroking his hair again, which felt amazing — she could do that forever, too — but she frowned.

It was her frown that snapped him out of it. He blinked and turned his head toward the ceiling.

“Maybe we should get you something to eat,” she said.

“Yeah.” He tried to keep the crushing disappointment from his voice. “Just — give me a sec.”

“Are you okay?”

“Tired. M’fine.”

She didn’t have to respond for him to know she didn’t believe that. He opened his mouth to elaborate, but before he could, her head whipped toward the door and she went inhumanly still, like a spooked deer.

“Do you hear that?”

He listened, but it wasn’t his ears that kicked his legendary Warden reflexes into high gear.

“Is something burning?”

 

* * *

 

She was out the door before he’d even stumbled to his feet.

Damn. He’d have given anything for speed like that in combat.

He didn’t have much in the way of will left, so he gathered his fear and panic and murmured a word as he followed her. A ball of energy glowed green in his right hand.

He skidded to a stop on the svartalf-made hardwood floor next to her and took in the scene.

In the smoky haze, the apartment looked like a war zone. Every one of Molly’s sundry home and kitchen appliances was contributing. A nearly wall-sized television mounted over the fireplace — which Carlos had overlooked before in favor of, well, boobs — seemed to be emitting most of the smoke, along with its accompanying entertainment system. But his eye was drawn to the desk by an actual fire which engulfed what might once have been a laptop.

“ _Madre de Dios_.”

“Put that away,” Molly hissed at him.

“My clothes are back there —”

“Not that.” She rolled her eyes, but a smirk graced her lips. “That. You’re making it worse.”

She nodded at the green ball of energy still glowing in his hand.

He dismissed the spell and moved to get some water, but Molly threw out an arm to stop him, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. She slowly exhaled, simultaneously covering every surface in a thin layer of frost and extinguishing all extreme exothermic reactions. A wave of her hand cleared the smoke and frost away, and the apartment sat as it was before — with a few extra fried electronics.

“Whoa,” he breathed, shivering.

“I know,” she said. “I probably should have thought about the electronics before we …”

That wasn’t what he’d been referring to. He’d heard of the immense power of the Faerie Queens, but he’d never seen any of them in action before. Even at the top of his game, on his best, most rested, pre-back-injury day, he _might_ have been able to do that, and only that, before taking a nap for a week.

And Molly was just a baby queen.

He forced a chuckle to avoid thinking about what might have been left of him if Winter had satisfied itself in Molly’s bed. “I guess that’s what happens when two wizards —”

“One wizard. My magic isn’t mortal anymore.” She shrugged. “I mean, sometimes I get a bit of interference from my residual power, but it’s not enough to do this. That’s how I can have all this stuff for when my siblings and Maggie come over to watch movies. I even have a cell phone.”

She crossed to the kitchen and picked up an honest-to-goodness iPhone. She punched the screen a couple times before tossing it carelessly back to the counter. “I did have a cell phone, anyway.”

Carlos, jaw dragging along the floor, surveyed the damage that he — alone, apparently — had wreaked. Since about the age of fourteen, he’d always been extra careful to control his emotions around anything sensitive, like his family’s television or all the expensive appliances in the restaurant. It wasn’t like they could afford to replace anything if he fried it. Whenever he felt himself losing control, he’d go someplace safe, like Raul’s place or, more recently, his own tiny, electronics-free apartment.

He’d never let loose like this, and certainly not since he’d grown powerful enough to join the Council. He hadn’t been aware he was capable of this type of unintentional property damage.

“ _Madre de Dios_ ,” he said again. “I’ll pay for it.”

He didn’t know how; his meager Warden salary barely covered the exorbitant rent on his shitty studio apartment in East L.A. But he’d figure out something. Maybe she’d accept a multi-decade payment plan.

“You absolutely will not,” Molly said. “Harry used to say he’d never have survived if he hadn’t had a ‘real job’” — she curled her fingers around the words — “to supplement his Warden pay. And I’m pretty sure you don’t have anything going on the side.”

He opened his mouth to protest.

“It’s just stuff,” she continued with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Trust me, my salary is considerably higher than yours.”

His face grew hot at her smirk. For some reason, her reaction only made him feel worse. He didn’t think it was about her making more money, but he heard his sister Maria’s voice in his head say, _“Don’t be a sexist prick, Carlito,”_ anyway.

And it wasn’t the way she’d put quotes around _real job_ , either; that seemed to be more of a dis to Harry’s detective work than Carlos’s work as a Warden. He thought.

She had opened the refrigerator — which was making some odd thumping noises — and was talking at an almost frenetic pace about the food she pulled out onto the expansive countertop. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who benefited from the distraction of incessant babbling.

“How about grilled cheese? I think I have everything for that, and — Ooh, ice cream! Better eat it before it melts, and don’t tell me to use Winter to keep it cold because then how would I eat all this ice cream guilt-free?”

She turned to him with a too-large grin on her face, which faded to a frown when he didn’t return it.

Neither of them said anything, and he figured it out.

It was the way she’d so casually dismissed his rampant destruction of her “stuff.” Too quick, too easy. He didn’t care how rich she was — did Faerie Queens get an actual salary, like a biweekly paycheck in mortal money that she deposited in her bank account like a normal person? — he’d just trashed her apartment and ruined all the things she’d apparently bought for her younger siblings to enjoy. It was obviously bothering her, otherwise why the babbling?

She’d invited him into her home and he’d cried and had second thoughts and then fried all her nice things. No one in their right mind would want to keep him around.

And she didn’t; she’d asked him to leave and he’d —

He’d _refused_.

_“If a woman tells you ‘no,’”_ he heard Maria’s voice in his head. _“You say ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do_ not _insist.”_

“I think I should leave,” he said softly.

Her entire body slumped, like a half-melted snowman in the sun. She closed her eyes.

“If you want to go, I won’t stop you,” she whispered. “But I’d like — I _need_ you —”

His breathing hitched.

She opened her eyes, and they were brimming with desperation.

“Please stay?” Her voice broke on the last word.

In that moment, she didn’t look like a formidable Queen of Faerie. She looked like a scared young woman who didn’t want to be alone tonight.

Damn, did he know how that felt.

Fuck Winter, fuck the Council, fuck it all.

Molly needed him. And right now, more than anything, he needed to be needed.

The fridge shifted from the thumping to a disturbing grinding noise.

She pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Can I take that as a ‘yes’?”

He summoned a pathetic little smirk.

She beamed, her smile brighter than an untouched snowdrift on a clear winter morning.

Ice started to pour from the dispenser in the fridge like coins from a winning slot machine.

Her face contorted into almost comical confusion.

“Sorry,” he said with a grimace.

“No, it’s just, I thought I disabled that,” she said, laughing. “Since I don’t need ice anymore.” She took a step toward him. “Maybe you could … re-disable it for me?” she asked, in the way one might suggest something naughty in the bedroom.

Heart pounding, he reached up to caress her cheek. She sighed softly and leaned in. It was their first real kiss — not counting the one that had brought her back from Winter or the one that had taken away his pain — since they’d made love. It was gentle, but lingering. His stomach fluttered, and those three little words drifted across his mind again.

The ice dispenser gave a final, wheezing gasp and shuddered to a stop.

When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers and flashed his cocky grin. “How was that?”

“ _Perfecto_ ,” she said.

At that, he grabbed her roughly and kiss her again.

She smiled into it before pulling away. “Hold that thought. I’ll make us something to eat first.”

“I can help. I make a mean grilled cheese.”

She turned a knob on the gas stove. The electric igniter must have been fried because she was forced to light the stove with a wave of her hand.

“You’re a guest,” she said lightly. “Go get cleaned up.”

He nodded and, as he headed to the master bath, through the bedroom, grabbing his boxer-briefs on the way, he tried to keep him embarrassment to a minimum.

The unsettling whine now coming from the refrigerator told him he hadn’t succeeded.

 

* * *

 

The light bulb in the bathroom flickered back on. Carlos slumped against the sink and slid down to the floor.

It wasn’t just his mortification that every emotion he felt for the rest of the evening would be telegraphed by a wisp of smoke or the disgusting smell of burnt rubber and silicon that had kept him in here for going on ten attempts at a suppression spell. He was also thinking preemptively — he didn’t want a stray thought about Molly in the middle of the night to place them in a Harry-Dresden-versus-a-building scenario.

The problem was, the evening had thus far taken an enormous emotional and physical toll on Carlos, as Molly’s electronics could attest. A wizard short on energy could tap into emotions to power his magic, but trying to power a suppression spell with emotions was like trying to control a forest fire by encircling it with gasoline — it _could_ work, if everyone involved knew what they were doing and the circumstances were absolutely perfect for it, but it was far more likely to burn down half of California. And Carlos was only okay at suppression spells, and his current emotional state was far too volatile for the precision required.

Molly’s theme ran through his head as he dragged himself to his feet. He hadn’t noticed that harmony before. Which was probably why he’d failed again.

He wasn’t so proud that he couldn’t admit defeat. Maybe she had some sort of faerie suppression spell she could use.

He opened the bathroom door and leaned against the jamb.

Words failed him as he took in the bedroom. Lit candles were scattered at strategic points, supplying just enough light to see by. His clothes were piled neatly on a chair next to the bed; his boots sat on the floor in front of it, his jacket hanging off the back. Molly sat on the bed, naked except for her panties, surrounded by several tubs of ice cream and a plate piled high with what smelled like grilled cheese sandwiches.

It was almost … romantic.

And the entire bed was surrounded by a thick, bright green chalk line.

He grinned like a doofus, and the bulb finally expired in a dramatic pop.

 

* * *

  

If he’d had the energy, he’d have smacked his forehead. A closed magical circle could be used for many different things — to summon a being of the Nevernever, or to keep magical energies or entities out. But it could also be used to contain, to keep magical energies or entities _in_. It wouldn’t be as effective as a good suppression spell, but then again, his pathetic attempts in the bathroom would never have been as effective as a good suppression spell, either.

“You’re a genius.” He only slurred the _s_ a little.

“I’m brilliant as well as skilled," she said, winking.

He stumbled into the room.

She was at his side in the literal blink of an eye.

“You’re fast.” He swayed drunkenly.

“And you’re stupid.” She wrapped her arm around him and helped him to the bed, shaking her head good-naturedly. “Typical arrogant White Council wizard, thinking his fancy suppression spells are the only way.”

“Was it the fridge or the light under the door that gave me away?”

She gave a look eerily similar to his sister Luisa’s _That’s-a-dumb-question-but-I’ll-answer-it-anyway_ looks. “Neither. I just know how you think.”

His heart skipped a beat, but he powered through it. “So why didn’t you stop me?”

She laughed. “I wanted to see how stubborn you’d be about it, but I was going to go in soon. You were in there for almost half an hour.”

_“Rude!”_ came his sister Sophia in his head.

He wished they’d all get out of there.

“What’s with the green chalk?”

She shrugged. “Makes things more interesting than boring white. What’s the deal with wizards and old white things?”

He chuckled. “You’re asking the wrong wizard.”

He half-sat, half-collapsed on floor just inside the circle and crawled to his boots. From one of them he pulled a beautiful, mother-of-pearl-handled knife. He crouched inside the circle — which, because the bed was against the wall, actually went up the wall and around the headboard — pricked the tip of his finger, and touched the chalk with his blood.

A circle sprang up around them, surrounding him with a familiar quiet as his senses were cut off from the random magical energies that constantly assaulted them. He and Molly were now, magically speaking, in their own little world.

“I could have done that,” Molly said, helping him to his feet as he sucked on his finger. “You must really be wiped out if you can’t even summon the will to close a circle. What are you, a vanilla mortal?”

“Had to prove my manhood,” he said, wiping his knife on his boxer-briefs as she helped him scale the Mount Kilimanjaro bed. “Knives. Blood.”

“Oh, yes, very manly.” She took the knife, tossed it to the bed, and pushed him gently after it, shoving a sandwich into his hand. “Almost passing out again from being an idiot. Actually,” she added, opening the drawer of her bedside table, which was inside the circle, “that is archetypically male.”

“Exactly,” he said, mouth full.

He started to feel better after the first bite. As he stuffed his face — the sandwich tasted fantastic, even if burnt on one side — she pulled a mini first aid kid from the drawer and started applying antiseptic to his finger.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I do this all the time.”

“I can tell.” She caressed the scars on his hand, particularly the one down the center of his palm which he used for spells that required larger amounts of blood.

“My baby sister Aurelia has diabetes, and she says my fingers are more scarred than hers.”

She frowned, but said nothing.

He put two sandwiches together and ate them like a double-decker. He kind of liked the unfamiliar, slightly burnt taste. His family owned a restaurant, so he never had food that was even remotely bad, and even on missions, if they weren’t eating rations, he always insisted on cooking because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.

Molly opened a bandaid.

“It’s just a little —” He stopped when he saw the characters on the box. “Really?”

Molly finished applying the bandaid with a flourish and grinned. It was bright purple and boasted a picture of Queen Elsa and the words _Let it go_.

“Last time I had the little Jawas over, Maggie scraped her knee, and I didn’t have bandaids. When we got some, and she chose these. So you’re in good company.”

“Guess she won’t be able to watch _Frozen_ here anymore,” he mumbled. Great. Now he was disappointing small children he hadn’t even met.

She flicked him on the ear, like his mother always did with a snapped, _“Quit moping!”_ in Spanish.

“Ow!”

“I said it was fine, Catholic boy, so cut it out with the guilt, or I’ll start calling you Dresden Junior.”

“That’s just mean,” he said, but he couldn’t keep from smiling.

She grabbed a tub of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and dug in. “That’s a pretty knife.”

“White Court commissions the best.”

He offered her the last grilled cheese. She shook her head, and he devoured it.

“Why would the White Court commission a knife for you?”

“It wasn’t made for me specifically.” He grabbed the tub of chocolate chip cookie dough and took the spoon she proffered. “It was sort of bequeathed to me after its owner died a horrible and much-deserved death at the hands of the Wardens of the White Council and their temporary mobster-mercenary allies.”

She gaped at him, a tiny bit of chocolate smudged across her chin. It was adorable, and he was struck by a strong urge to lick it off.

“You mean that’s one of the knives that — when you and Harry — ?”

He grinned. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly a few times. It had been ages since he’d done that to someone. He forgot how much he loved it.

But he finally had mercy on her — and himself, since her adorable disbelief and the chocolate smudge were making his heart go berserk. While he spooned ice cream into his mouth with one hand, he tossed the knife into the air with the other and caught it, flat, on his extended index finger, where it balanced steadily on the purple bandaid.

“Do you know how good a knife has to be to do this?” he asked. “And these two were thrown right into my lap. I see them as an excellent consolation prize for getting stabbed twice.”

He tossed the knife up again and caught it by the handle, gave it a showboaty twirl between his fingers, and threw it away without looking. It landed point-first in the wood floor less than a centimeter short of the edge of the circle, quivering with a soft but satisfying _boy-yoy-yoing_.

Molly fixed him with a gimlet stare, which was only somewhat undercut by the chocolate smudge. “Are you going to pay to get that buffed out?”

“Is that not covered under the aegis of Svartalfheim?” He spooned another bite of ice cream into his mouth with a flourish.

That broke her, and she finally laughed. “You’re ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head.

“Ridiculously talented. And good-looking. I’m a real prize.”

She frowned and looked away, wiping at her mouth. As Carlos focused intently on his ice cream, he couldn’t decide if he’d missed an opportunity to kiss her, or if that would have ruined their banter, or if it didn’t matter because he’d just destroyed whatever moment they had with his last comment, though he didn’t understand why. It was a joke; he was so fucked up, he was far from any sort of prize.

“Can I ask you something?” she said softly.

“No questions, please.”

She pressed her lips together as if trying not to laugh, but the question burst from her, like it could no longer be contained.

“Why the hell would you ever tell Harry you were a virgin?”

 

* * *

 

And so they talked. Eventually they brushed away the crumbs and set aside the ice cream — frozen in a cold bubble of Molly’s creation — and curled up against one another under the covers. They joked and laughed for hours in their own little world. If they veered too close to a topic that threatened to puncture the comfort and safety of their green magical circle, one of them would bring them back with a ridiculous question or sarcastic comment. Carlos would have babbled about anything if it meant that she would stay there in his arms, head on his chest, listening and laughing and chatting forever.

That was how he ended up explaining to her, as she pointed to them, the story behind every one of his scars.

“What about this one?”

She drew her finger across a long, almost completely faded scar on his right bicep. He flexed it, and she giggled and bit her lip, which made his heart skip like a stone across a pond. It did that whenever she laughed. Or smiled. Or did pretty much anything, really.

“That was my inaugural Warden injury,” he said. “Sliced by a Red Court vamp. Nicked my artery.”

Molly gasped and damn it, there went his heart again.

“No, it was awesome.” He tried for comforting, but that just made her look at him as though concerned he might not be in his right mind.

“I think you mean ‘aw _ful_ ’? Nicking an artery is generally considered bad.”

“Not if it’s your inaugural Warden injury. You never forget your first.” He winked.

She actually blushed at that, pressing her lips together in a shy smile. His heart went off again, and he started to worry that she might be able to feel it.

“Your first injury as a Warden is like a badge of honor,” he said. “The closer you come to dying without actually being incapacitated, the more bad-ass you are. It’s a fine line. The Captain bought me a bottle of really nice scotch for it. Said it was one of the best she’d seen.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you have been more bad-ass if you hadn’t been injured at all?”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just make everything seem easy and look so damned good doing it that they make me the unofficial poster boy of the rules.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled and placed a cool palm on the scar. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

She said that after every story. And every time his stupid heart did a stupid flip in his stupid chest.

“What about this one?” She indicated a relatively fresh, circular scar on the left side of his abdomen. “You always wear kevlar, so not a bullet, and it’s not the right shape for a knife. Were you stabbed with a sword or something?”

She poked at it. He instinctively sucked in a breath so that her finger never actually touched it.

“Close,” he said. “Impaled.”

He nudged her, and she sat up enough so he could roll away, revealing the identical scar in the same location on his back.

She inhaled sharply, and her fingers brushed, not the circular scar, but the long surgical scars of a similar age along his spine.

He rolled back, but she didn’t lay down again. She stared, frowning deeply, at the circular scar on his abdomen, and caressed it with a single finger.

His stomach twisted, as if in memory of that sick feeling of eternal free fall before the back-breaking impact. For a moment he was back in that warehouse, shish-kabobbed on a rusty piece of rebar, unable to move, breaths coming in wet and shallow gasps, a warm, red pool spreading too quickly across the concrete, the kids crying for help —

It was her cool, soft lips against the scar that brought him back to the present. She was watching him, eyes brimming with worry.

His pulse thundered in his ears, and his breaths came too fast, but he summoned his cocky grin and pulled her into his arms. As he held her close and inhaled her scent and felt her coolness against his hot, clammy skin, he started to relax.

“It’s okay.” Her voice vibrated through his chest. “You’re safe here.”

He blinked rapidly and squeezed her just a little tighter because somehow she’d known that was exactly what he needed to hear.

“Do you have nightmares about it?” she asked.

He hesitated for only a moment. “Almost every night.”

She snuggled into him a little more. “Me, too. But maybe tonight will be different.”

He held her close, reveling in the comfort she brought him.

Maybe.

 

* * *

 

She said nothing for so long that he thought she’d fallen asleep. He started to drift off, too, even though he was in a strange place and hadn’t secured it and had no weapons nearby if anyone attacked.

“What about this one?”

“Hmm?” He managed to keep the syllable in his normal, manly register and his start to only a twitch, despite his instinct to jump to his feet and gather his will in preparation for an attack.

_Dios._ He wondered if other, more sexually active Wardens had this much trouble loosening up.

She traced her finger along a faded, three-inch pucker just below his belly button. He tensed his abdomen automatically and clenched his teeth.

“This is from the Deeps, right? From one of those beautiful knives?”

“Yes,” he said, grabbing her hand. “But please don’t do that.”

“Does it hurt?”

Her worried frown forced the truth out of him in the form of a particularly heated blush.

“Ticklish,” he muttered.

The smirk that blossomed on her face wasn’t evil, per se, but it was definitely evil-adjacent.

“You mean right here?”

She ran her finger along the scar again, and despite — or perhaps because of — his best efforts not to, he burst into laughter.

“Stop!” he said, snatching both her hands up and away from the spot.

Their eyes met, and they both froze, grinning like idiots — well, she was smiling beautifully, but he knew he was wearing that doofy grin again, and he didn’t give a single damn. His heart was in his throat, pounding so hard he found it difficult to swallow, or breathe, or do any of those things his body kind of needed to do to continue living.

“You should do that more often,” she said, breathless. “I love your laugh.”

At that, his heart stuttered to a halt.

He almost responded. He opened his mouth to say, “I love your laugh, too,” or maybe something even less specific but more romantically suicidal.

But she flushed a deep red and looked away, and he managed to clamp his mouth shut just in time to keep any foolhardy words from escaping.

She settled back into his arms, but something was different now.

Their circle, though not broken, had been weakened.

She placed her palm on top of the ticklish scar, like she had with the others.

He waited for her to follow it with the same words, too, but instead she murmured, “I have a confession to make.”

His stomach decided to take a sudden and indefinite vacation, leaving in its wake an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies.

His heart took that as a sign that it needed to work quadruple overtime.

“When you were in the hospital,” she said, tracing the air just above the scar. “I visited you.”

His stomach returned from its vacation about twenty pounds heavier. His heart joined it. His brain cursed them both for not sitting still and itself for thinking stupid romantic thoughts.

Then his brain caught up with his ears and started to process what she’d said.

“No, you didn’t,” he said. “I would definitely have remembered that.”

She wasn’t looking at him, but her ears turned pink.

“It was after your second surgery, before you woke up. I left when Harry got there.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged, watching her own finger trace the air above his scar. “How? ‘Hi, Warden Ramirez. By the way, I sat with you while you were unconscious in the hospital and held your hand for a few hours. Good luck fighting vampires!’”

“You held my hand? For a few hours?” he repeated, but only because his brain had now left for vacation — or was at least processing things very, very slowly. “Why?”

She finally met his gaze. She held it for a moment before saying, “Did you know that, after Harry, you were the first wizard I ever met?”

He shook his head, almost grinning in disbelief. “No way.”

He almost said, “I’m sorry,” or worse, “That’s horrible,” but thankfully his brain seemed to be back in control of things.

“He’d just explained everything to me,” she said. “That there were Laws of Magic. That I’d just broken one of them. That the punishment was death. That I needed to turn myself in. I was terrified, and I had no idea what to expect, except —”

“Old white guys with long beards, short tempers, and no sense of humor?”

Whew. At least his wise-ass gland was still functioning.

She gave a small chuckle. “Then you literally stepped out of thin air, and you were —”

“Young, hot, and Hispanic?”

She flushed again — it was a good look on her. “I think you said something like, ‘It’s a curse to be so damned talented when I’m already obscenely good-looking, but I try to soldier on as best I can.’”

He groaned and covered his face. “Obnoxious.”

“Confident,” she corrected. “Powerful. Funny. Just like Harry. You were obviously friends, and he trusted you to be on his side. On my side,” she added quietly. “Or at least to be fair.”

It was that last one that was closest to reality. At the time, Harry didn’t have many friends on the Council — he still didn’t, really — and he’d needed people who would give him the benefit of the doubt and play fair. Though they’d both been aware that, when the chips were down, Carlos would side with Harry over the old fogeys on the Council.

“You were kind. You called me ‘miss,’” she said. “The other Wardens looked at me like I was a criminal, but you didn’t. I was terrified, and here was this cute wizard smiling at me. It was comforting.”

That surprised him. He’d always tried to keep his distance from young people walking to their deaths for breaking the laws, especially in the beginning, because it hurt to see them as people and hope the Council voted for clemency, only to once again be forced to stand idly by while someone he respected ended their life. If he’d been kind to her, it was only out of politeness — and guilt for having to go through all the bullshit barbaric motions like that damned hood.

But knowing that even those small things had made her just a little less frightened warmed his insides.

Plus, she’d said he was cute.

“Your voice and Harry’s were the only ones I recognized behind the hood. The Merlin asked about Rosie and Nelson, and you said, ‘The psychic trauma was serious, but it is my belief that both will recover.’” Her eyes glistened. “I’ll never forget that. Harry told me he wasn’t sure. But you were.” She smirked. “You even mouthed off to the Merlin when he questioned you.”

He grimaced. “Not one of my finer moments.”

He’d long worried that his remark had only hurt her case by antagonizing the Merlin, and that if her father and the rest of the Senior Council hadn’t returned in time …

The old bastard had criticized his lack of experience, but what had really pissed Carlos off was the fact that, at the time, he'd had considerably more experience with the damage done by mental magic than a lot of Wardens. Raul had been a Warden, and when Carlos had expressed interest in becoming one, too, he’d been allowed to tag along on a few investigations. He’d seen the type of irreparable damage that mental magic could do, and the damage to Molly’s friends, though extensive, was not permanent. It wasn’t fair — it wasn’t _right_ — for the old coot to hold Molly accountable for something that wasn’t true just because he didn’t like Harry.

“You were defending me,” Molly said. “I know I’m biased, but I think it was one of your best moments.”

His mouth opened wordlessly; he was absolutely speechless. No one had ever said something like that about anything he’d done. Sure, he privately had a list of things he was proudest of, but those usually included jumping in front of projectiles or getting arrested for making a principled — if ill-advised and poorly thought-out — stand. Not merely telling the truth. That was just him being himself.

She smiled softly. “I don’t think I can explain to you how much it meant to me to hear you say that. I was trying to help them, but all I did was hurt them. When you said they both would recover, and you were so confident about it, I was just so, so relieved.”

At the last word, her voice broke.

“I was still terrified,” she said. “But learning that Rosie and Nelson and their baby would be okay helped me to …” She frowned. “Accept whatever came next. At least they would be all right.”

He’d had no idea that those few words — the simple truth — had meant so much to her. The warmth inside him crackled and hissed like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

“We never really talked much,” she continued. “But whenever we did, you always made me feel better. That night I drove you to the Raith mansion, I was frightened out of my mind about what was going to happen, but then you complimented my veil and gave me a goofy bow and made me laugh, and I felt calmer.”

“I love your laugh.” He said it this time before he could think twice about it. “I did then, too.”

She leaned in close, eyes boring into him with an intensity that made it impossible to look away. Her pupils were dilated. A vein in her neck throbbed far more than it should have. They exchanged hot, humid breaths which came far too quickly for just sitting still.

“I thought you’d died that night.” Her hushed voice was hurried, as if she might run out of time to convey her secret. “There was a huge explosion, and Harry came out alone, and he collapsed into the back seat before I could ask him any questions. I cried the whole way home.”

The sparkler erupted into a flame, growing with every word she said. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, say anything until she was finished.

“It wasn’t until Karrin called several hours later that I found out you were only injured. When Harry woke up, I went to the hospital to see you, to convince myself you were okay.”

She took his face in her trembling hands and leaned her forehead against his. He could feel her speeding pulse through that contact, pounding almost as hard as his own.

“I sat next to you for four hours, holding your hand and thanking God you were alive. I don’t know why. I … liked you.”

His heart stopped for the entire length of that eternal pause.

“You never judged me for what I’d done. You just made me laugh. I remember thinking that it would have been a cruel twist for the world to lose such a good, kind person. I really wanted to be the first person you saw when you woke up, but then Harry arrived, and it felt weird to stay. I could have smacked him when he came back and said you’d been taken home, because I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

The flame was a full-on bonfire now, heating every part of him until he was too hot, breathing too fast, heart beating so hard he thought it might explode from his chest.

“I never knew how to tell you,” she said, nearly as breathless as he was. “But after tonight, you deserve to know.”

His vision tunneled until his entire world consisted of Molly, and only Molly. The fire in his chest consumed him, pulsing in time with his heart, rhythmically repeating three little words with every beat. He swallowed, but they didn’t go down this time. They were waiting to burst free, and his brain was about to let them.

“Please say something.” Her cheeks were a deep pink.

He opened his mouth —

— and nothing came out.

“What?” she whispered, searching his face. “What are you thinking?”

He couldn’t form the words, but he did the next best thing.

He threw her to the bed and kissed her senseless. He closed his eyes and turned off his brain and let the fire propel his every thought and feeling into that kiss. He had no way to know, but it sure as hell felt like she was doing the same.

When they finally broke apart, gasping for air, he opened his eyes to see her smiling.

“That’s a very nice thought,” she said.

He grinned his best, most genuine grin, opened his mouth to say, “I just had another thought” before kissing her again — cute, clever, smooth —

— and “I love you” came out instead.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to those of you who are (still) reading and reviewing and kudos-ing. I apologize for the delays, but life and my own perfectionism get in the way sometimes.
> 
> Also, I am not in any way a fluent Spanish speaker, so any and all errors are mine, cobbled from what I can find on the internet.
> 
> Previously, in _Cold Nights_ :  
>   
>  _When they finally broke apart, gasping for air, he opened his eyes to see her smiling._  
>   
>  _“That’s a very nice thought,” she said._  
>   
>  _He grinned his best, most genuine grin, opened his mouth to say, “I just had another thought” before kissing her again — cute, clever, smooth —_  
>   
>  _— and “I love you” came out instead._

In the eternal second after the words left his mouth, Carlos’s heart sang in triumph. His heartbeat intertwined with the theme of Molly’s soul until they became one in harmonic perfection, pulsing to the constant rhythm of those three magnificent little words that contained so much.

In the next second, he realized he’d made a grave mistake.

Molly’s eyes widened in terror, the smiling relief she’d obviously felt at her own confession wiped away by his. She shoved him off of her with a smack to his chest so hard it felt like a punch, the force of which seemed to propel her away from him to the other side of the bed.

At most, there were eighteen inches between them. But it might as well have been a million miles.

With those three words, he’d blown their circle apart.

Metaphorically. He was pretty sure it was still literally intact from the lack of smoke and dying refrigerator noises.

But they were no longer in their own little world. He’d broken their unspoken rule, committed the worst possible sin.

He’d mentioned the future.

Before, they’d been able to keep it at bay and pretend it didn’t exist. But with those three stupid words, he’d reminded them both that this couldn’t last forever, that whatever they might find in each other could only be temporary.

Miles away, Molly gripped her head in her hands like she was trying to squeeze something out of it and practically groaned, “I know. God, I know, I know, I know, I know …”

Carlos crumpled like an ancient, yellowed newspaper put to a myriad of disparate uses across the decades before finally disintegrating into a million tiny pieces. Tears sprang to his eyes, and it took every iota of self-control he had left to keep in a sob.

Of course she didn’t feel the same way. No one ever did.

He gathered himself, expelling the pathetic, depressing thought with a shake of his head. He needed to gain back what they’d lost. That lovely, peaceful world they’d inhabited where they could poke gentle fun at each other and commiserate about not being good enough.

“Molly.” His voice warbled dangerously. “I —”

“Shut up.” She was faced away from him, still rocking, breathing quickly now, tension radiating off of her.

No, not tension — power.

That snapped him to attention, and his legendary Warden instincts kicked in, his own pain momentarily forgotten in the interest of self-preservation.

“Molly, it’s okay.” He spoke with the gentle urgency of someone trying to calm a wild animal, which, in a sense, he was — Winter. “I didn’t mean that. It just popped out. I got carried away —”

The background hum of gathering Winter rose to a roar, and the energy in the room surged in toward her like the ominous precursor to a tidal wave.

“I said, shut _up_!” She flung her hand out in front of him.

A blizzard-force wind blew past him, throwing him back and smacking his head against the headboard. It blasted the magical circle to smithereens in a loud flash and slammed into her svartalf-built vanity, which froze into a giant block of ice with a deafening crack.

Molly let out a shuddering breath that culminated in a small cry and slumped, her arm falling limply to the bed. She panted heavily, every few breaths a whimper.

Carlos gaped at the vanity. A few millimeters closer and he’d have become a macabre addition to the room’s decor — a bloody Carlos-cicle, frozen in ghastly terror and pain for all eternity.

As it was, he blinked stars from his vision and tried not to move his head too drastically. Apparently her no-pain spell only applied to his back — it was just like the fae to be so damned literal — because not only did he probably boast an impressive goose-egg on the back of his head, but the skin across his chest had turned a raw, stinging red, like a bad sunburn.

Or, rather, a bad Winter windburn.

He should have been terrified. For the second time tonight, the Winter Lady had lost control, and both times he’d been caught in the crossfire. If he’d possessed even an ounce of intelligence or self-preservation, he’d have beat it the hell out of there, naked or not, soul-crushing loneliness be damned.

But once again all he saw was a scared young woman who’d been endowed against her will with more power than she knew how to handle. A woman who might or might not love him back, but who certainly deserved — and, in fact, had already gained — his empathy.

If he’d been a bit braver, he’d have taken her in his arms and told her everything would be all right. But he was a pathetic, hopeless romantic, not a complete moron.

So he sat up, regarded her prone, limp arm, and rested his hand gently atop hers.

She twitched as if to pull away, but he tightened his fingers. Not enough to hold her hand there against her will; just enough to send a message.

_I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere._

Molly whimpered again, and the million miles between them collapsed to a few inches.

Encouraged, he slid his other hand underneath hers, entwining their fingers, and began to stroke the back of her hand with the thumb of his top one.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The noise she made might have been a gasp of surprise, or a small and mirthless laugh.

“I’m fine.” She placed the tiniest emphasis on _I’m_.

Yikes. If he was that obviously not fine whenever he said he was, no wonder he only got exasperated eye rolls in response.

“Are you?” she whispered.

“Just a little chilly.” He gave her his best cocky grin and a dashing wink. “But the cold never bothered me anyway.”

She let out something that was either a laugh or a sob, or possibly both. Her fingers tightened in his.

“Let’s just call a mulligan.” he said. “Pretend the last minute or so never happened.”

Although she wasn’t looking at him, he saw her frown.

“Who broke your heart,” she said, “and made you feel like you couldn’t be yourself?”

His stomach plunged to his toes. He heard Yuki’s uncomfortable laugh, the awkward, faux-tenderness in her voice as she’d said, “Oh, Carlos — I don’t really see you like that.” His heart squeezed in memory of the pain.

Or maybe it wasn’t a memory at all.

He set his jaw. “I did. I got attached, thought something was there when it wasn’t. I’m sorry for making the same mistake again.”

“It’s not like that,” she said with a squeeze of his hand.

“You don’t have to explain.” He meant it, too. He didn’t want to hear her attempt to justify it to herself.

“Yes, I do, because —”

“Wait.”

He climbed off the bed and, crouching just inside the green chalk circle, flashed her another cocky grin.

“Unless you want me to mercy-kill your refrigerator, we’d better put this back up. Don’t worry. No blood this time.”

She finally looked at him. The sadness on her face would have broken his heart if it wasn’t already in the process of breaking.

He closed his eyes and channeled the emptiness that gaped in his chest into a murmured word. The energy left him in a small _whoosh_ , though the pain didn’t, and the circle sprang up around him. With it came the familiar, welcome silence, and they were once again in their own little world.

He nodded, winced at the sharp pain that shot through his head, summoned his grin, and turned back to the bed to accept his fate.

 

* * *

  

Her look of horror wiped the smile right off his face.

“Oh, Carlos.” Her hands flew to her mouth, her gaze fixed on his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“What, this?” He motioned to his Winter-burn as he carefully mounted the bed and settled in next to her. “I can barely feel it.”

He only realized how bad that sounded when her eyes widened in alarm.

“I mean, I can feel it, but it’s not that bad,” he said hastily. “It really does look worse than it is.”

She reached out and placed a palm on his chest. Its warmth surprised him, as did the goosebumps that erupted across his skin.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

“No.” He swallowed. “The opposite.”

“I hurt you. Again. But you’re still here.” He mouth twitched, a hint of exasperation in her voice. “I think you might be stupid.”

He grinned at that. Most of the people who cared about him were aggravated with him on a regular basis, and now Molly was one of them.

“I never claimed to be smart.”

She cocked a perfect, blond eyebrow. “You’ve expounded on your brilliance at least half a dozen times tonight.”

“As a Warden, yeah. I’m the best. But not when it comes to …”

He trailed off as his brain finally caught up to his big, fat mouth.

But not soon enough. Molly shifted her hand until it rested over his left pectoral.

His heart pounded under it; he braced for impact.

“I like you,” she whispered. “A lot. But I —”

“Don’t see me like that.” That sharp edge had found it’s way back into his voice, so he tried to temper it with his cocky grin. “Which is probably for the best, since I’m way too much man for any one woman, and —”

She pulled her hands back and snapped, “Are you constitutionally incapable of being serious for ten seconds?”

Her words hit him like a slap in the face. Of course he was capable of — the jokes were the only way he could cope with all the shit in his life. He’d been doing it for years; it was a part of who he was.

But no one had ever snapped at him like that. His mentor Raul and his parents scolded sometimes; _Abuela_ gently chided; Harry usually just ignored him when he shot off his mouth, which was only fair since anything else would have been incredibly hypocritical. Even is sisters usually just rolled their eyes in exasperation — if they hadn’t beaten him to the joke.

Molly’s intense reaction elicited an odd mix of annoyance and appreciation. What no one ever realized — except for his older sister, Maria, who was the only person in his life who was always honest with him — was that sometimes he needed to be smacked into line. He needed someone who would go toe-to-toe with him and not take his bullshit, who would snap him out of his incessant need to joke and force him to face the music.

Damn it. What he really needed was to take it down about twenty-seven notches and stop thinking about how perfect she was for him and start preparing himself for what she was about to say.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was unfair.”

“You’re right.” He bowed his head and picked at the bedsheet. “You listened to me vent all my shit earlier. The least I can do is —” He sighed. “It’s a —”

“Defense mechanism. I know.” She took both of his hands in hers.

Maybe he was a coward, but he couldn’t make himself look at her while she broke his heart.

“I want you to know, first and foremost, that tonight has been amazing. You’ve been amazing. So kind and caring and understanding and … open.”

She ducked her head until their eyes met.

“I know how difficult and significant it was for you to confess your darkest sins when you had no idea how I’d react. To trust me with your true self and to give all of yourself to me.” Her voice cracked. “Thank you so, so much for that.”

She smiled at him. He made a valiant effort to return it, tried with everything he had left to focus on her lovely words and her gorgeous smile and pretend it wasn’t all leading to a big, fat _but_.

“Thank you for being stupid and bringing me back from Winter when you should have been running away.” She edged closer to him. “Thank you for looking past my power and your fear and seeing the real me. For showing me that I’m not …” She closed her eyes. “Unlovable.”

In that moment, he forgot all about his pain and felt only hers.

They weren’t entirely dissimilar.

When her eyes snapped open, they were filled with a determination that had nothing to do with Winter. The violins and woodwinds of her soul’s theme, staccato and syncopated and steady, played in his mind.

“You deserve someone who can do the same for you,” she said. “Someone who can say those words back with the same conviction.” Her voice began to waver. “I wish I could. More than anything right now, I want to be able to say it back. But I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

She squeezed their joined hands too tightly.

“I care about you so much.” Her voice rose in pitch and volume and speed as she spoke. “If I was ever going to say it again, it would be now, but you deserve to be loved with no doubts and I just _don’t know_ because the last time I said it to someone he got high and had sex with my friend and when I tried to help him with my magic I hurt him because I was heartbroken and now I have so much more power and I have no idea how to control it and I can’t let myself hurt anyone ever again!”

The end of her rant rang out loudly in the silence that followed. She jerked her hands away, pulled her knees to her chest, and cradled her head, rocking back and forth.

He could only gape. Her anguish washed over him as palpably as if he was the Sensitive.

A small part of him experienced a surge of relief. She cared for him — maybe not enough to call it love, but enough to worry that she didn’t care enough. That was good enough for him.

It had to be.

A much larger part of him fought to overcome his rage and despair at the sheer unfairness of it all. They’d found in each other something they’d been missing for too long — someone who cared and understood and accepted them for who they were, and not who they were supposed to or wished they could be. But it was all just a very nice dream. They were two ships passing in the night, each a brief light for the other in the constant darkness, providing a shared experience of comfort, encouragement, and hope for something better, but without pausing, continuing on their own intractable course, their paths never to cross again.

But, by far, the overwhelming emotion he felt in that moment was compassion — or was it love? Right now, she was rocking back and forth, murmuring to herself, trying and failing to control her regathering power. And once again, all he wanted to do was take away her pain.

“Oy, Elsa.” He shoved his left index finger, the one with the purple bandaid, in front of her face. “Let it go.”

She gave an annoyed snort. “Get a new line.”

But the power had already evaporated.

“Hail Marys,” he said.

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Whenever I find myself losing control of my emotions and I need to stay calm, I recite Hail Marys in my head.”

“You pray?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said with a quick smirk. “It’s the repetition. Something familiar and boring and rote that allows me to detach from my emotions.” He shrugged. “It helps.”

He left out the part about it being an excellent boner killer.

“Harry always suggested math.” She glanced up from her hands just long enough to give him a shaky smile. “I like yours better.”

She was keeping her distance, though he was unsure whether it was for her sake or his.

It took his heart barely a second to overrule his brain and make a decision. Sure, there was a not insignificant chance that she’d reject him again, but he refused to let his fear take away any more of his time with Molly.

He reached out and wrapped his arm around her.

She seemed to melt at his touch. He held her tightly to him in an attempt to keep the darkness — and the future — at bay.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Hey.” He lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. They were red and puffy, but dry. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Not for nothing, _amoricita_ , but I don’t know for sure, either. I’m pretty melodramatic in general, and I got kind of caught up in the moment. But I’m glad I did. I don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow, but I don’t want to have any regrets about tonight.”

She bowed her head against him once again. He was happy she seemed to find him so comforting.

“You don’t have to call me that anymore if you don’t want to.” Her tone told him she hoped for the opposite.

“I’d like to, _amorcita_ , if it’s all the same to you.”

She nodded, and he felt her smile against him. “Will you stay?”

“That was my plan,” he said. “Long way back to L.A., and other various excuses.”

“Good.” She pulled away. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He took stock of himself — the pounding in his head had receded to a dull throb, and his chest, previously lobster-red, was now only a slightly tender, blotchy pink.

“I think maybe your faerie no-pain spell is finally kicking in,” he said.

She let out a relieved huff. “Good. Now let’s warm you up.”

A few minutes later, they were snuggled together under the sheets again.

But it wasn’t the same. Their bubble had popped, and though he’d vowed to savor every remaining moment with her, the future loomed, as loud, foreboding, and impossible to ignore as Harry Fucking Dresden.

 

* * *

  

They lay in silence for a long while, though Carlos’s thoughts were anything but peaceful.

 He hadn’t lied to her when he’d said he didn’t regret saying he loved her; he just wished it hadn’t irrevocably changed everything. He wanted to go back to how things were before — talking and laughing and sharing. Loving in everything but name.

Names had power. A name was far more than a mere designation; giving something a name meant assigning it a purpose. A value. An expectation. Perhaps due to his magical training, Carlos preferred things to have names. It allowed him to understand them, and there was nothing a wizard hated more than not understanding something. Even though things were different now, he felt better having given his feelings a name, because naming something made it real, and more than anything in the world right now, he wanted what they had to be real.

But Molly wouldn’t name her feelings because she didn’t know. She was also a wizard; maybe that was why she was upset right now. But wasn’t it better for this thing between them to have a name, even if the name wasn’t quite as accurate as both of them would have liked?

Just as he decided to go all wise wizard on her and explain that, she beat him to the punch.

“What did you see?”

— a punch to the gut.

“When?” he asked, even though he knew perfectly well what she was asking, had in fact dreaded the question since they’d lain in the slush on the sidewalk.

“When we soulgazed. What did you see?”

Only then did he realize how tense she was, and had been since they’d lain down. Her pulse pounded through their contact, her hands balled into fists against his chest, her breaths came just too quickly.

Her silence hadn’t been peaceful either.

He went through a quick breathing exercise and forced his muscles to relax before he answered her question.

“Nothing,” he said finally.

She instantly picked up her head. Her eyes swam with uncertainty and anxiety. “Nothing? At all?” Her voice was pitched higher than normal.

He understood the way that must have sounded to her and hastily amended his statement. “I mean I didn’t see anything because that’s not how my soulgazes work.”

Her uncertainty vanished, replaced by a sparkle of curiosity. Molly Carpenter, wizard, asking him a wordless question.

“I don’t see souls,” he answered. “I hear them.”

The spark burned brighter. “What do they sound like?”

“Music.”

Her eyes widened, dancing with the light of knowledge. “Like a theme song?”

“Yeah, but less _Happy Days_ , more John Williams.”

“That’s …” His heart pounded while she looked for a word. Her mouth dropped open and formed into an upward-curved oval. “That’s so cool!”

He laughed with only a little bit of relief. “My mentor had seen some things in his three centuries, and he said it was the weirdest soulgaze he’d ever heard of.”

“No, he didn’t,” she said sternly.

“Fine. He said it was unique.”

“Damn right.” Her tone was almost defensive — of his soulgaze, which she’d only just heard of, to a person she’d never met who had never actually been critical of it. “It’s lovely. And it — I don’t know why, but it suits you.”

She gazed at him like she was seeing him for the first time.

“We tried to think of a better name for it,” he babbled, in an attempt to focus on something, anything else. “But ‘soul-listen’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it. The best we came up with was ‘ _la musica del alma._ ’”

“Music of the soul?”

He gave her an impressed cock of his head.“ _Muy bueno, señorita_.”

Her cheeks turned pink. “Context clues. It was obvious. _La musica del alma,_ ” she said pensively.

The Spanish shivered through him, and he briefly considered teaching her random phrases just so he could hear her speak the language that was so near and dear to him.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “A beautiful name for a beautiful soulgaze.”

Damn, did he want to kiss her breathless for that. Pure … nameless feelings were written so clearly across her face that he had to look away before something inside him broke into a million tiny pieces.

“What does my soul sound like?” For a moment, he thought he _had_ kissed her breathless.

“It takes an entire orchestra to describe you, _amorcita._ ”

Her face was close, too close even for the most active listening. He felt her breath hitch, heard the tiniest whimper she made, saw her eyes glisten.

“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

He hadn’t meant it to be romantic. He caressed her cheek with his knuckles. “It’s the truth. I won’t be able to do it justice, but I’ll try. The main part is a piano.”

He hummed his favorite line: the fun, quirky piano melody.

“Then the strings and woodwinds go …” And he sang that, too.

He hummed and sang her entire soul to her, from start to finish, each line individually and then all together — or as close to all together as he could get with one set of vocal cords, hopping back and forth across the varying melodies and harmonies.

“Oh my God.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “That’s me. If I was a piece of music, that’s what I would sound like.”

“You are a piece of music. The most beautiful soul I’ve ever heard.”

She rolled away from him, onto her back, and covered her face with her hands. “Stop saying things like that.”

“Like what?” He rolled to his side, propping his head on his elbow. “The truth?”

She dropped her hands and glared at him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He looked away, but attempting to block out the soulgaze only brought its sounds and, worse, its images, to the forefront of his mind until it consumed all his senses.

_Inhala, exhala._

He reached for her hand and twined their fingers once again, addressing them when he spoke.

“Everything I just said is true.” His voice softened, and not intentionally. “I’ve never been happier to know I’ll never forget a soul. Yours is the only one that’s ever made me cry. But …”

He met her gaze. _Inhala, exhala_. “It was different.”

 

* * *

 

She stared at the ceiling for a long time after he was finished. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away. He didn’t want to push her, so he just held her hand and said nothing.

“The Sidhe don’t have souls. When a human becomes Sidhe …” Her lower lip wobbled, and more tears flowed down her cheeks, but her voice was steady. “My soul is dying.”

Those four simple words sliced across his heart, a pain in his chest as though she’d told him that _his_ soul was dying.

“I know.”

Because he did. He’d known since her soul had gone silent and he’d been thrown from the soulgaze. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it because a soulgaze was something a person could never forget, and he didn’t want to remember the sound and sight of her soul dying in front of him.

“I can’t talk to anyone about it,” she said to the ceiling. “Harry looks guilty whenever I bring it up. Karrin tries to understand, but she doesn’t really get it. Mab sees it as an inconvenience, like it’s a cold that I’ll get over, and the sooner the better. And Auntie Lea is — Auntie Lea.”

Carlos had never actually met the Leanansidhe, but that description pretty much matched what he’d heard.

But there was someone — a large group of someones, actually — that she’d left off the list.

“What about your family?”

She turned her head away.

Had he thought he couldn’t be in any more pain on behalf of another person? Because even though he wasn’t Sensitive, he would have sworn on his power that in that moment, he was feeling everything she was — her fear, her sadness, her unfathomable loneliness. It was almost too much to bear.

“ _Dios, amorcita_ ,” he breathed.

He attempted to release her hand to put his arms around her, but she refused to let go and rolled away from him to her side. The rejection hurt, though he understood.

But then she pulled him, by their entwined hands, toward her and wrapped his arm across her torso. He slid his other arm under her and held her close against him, his face in her hair.

He breathed her in and squeezed her tighter. He hadn’t lain with someone like this in years. From the little moan she let escape, he guessed she hadn’t either. It was probably sexist — he heard all his sisters scoff in disapproval — but it made him feel strong. He might not be able to save everyone, but right here, right now, he could keep her safe.

“Tell me,” he whispered into her ear.

He listened in silence while she described what seemed like everything that had happened since the moment Maeve died. She confessed every horrible thought she’d had in the past year, every dark moment, every time she’d felt scared or confused or devastated or angry or lonely. She cried as she spoke, but her voice never wavered again. He couldn’t fathom the strength she displayed, and he wished he could do more than listen and hold her.

But even those simple things seemed to help. Her words came more easily after a while, and the tears stopped. He wondered if she felt as light as he had after confessing his sins to her.

“Mab can’t tell me how long it will take,” she said. “Harry’s done some research when he’s not being her bitch or wallowing in his guilt about whatever his thing is that week, but there’s not much. Lily was Summer Lady for a decade and he said she looked exactly like Aurora had, but he didn’t know Lily before. She seemed like herself, but he can’t tell me if she really changed or not. Everything we can find points to a sort of regression to the mean — in the end, the person becomes the mantle they carry. But no one can give me a real answer about how long I have until the end.”

He tightened his arms around her in a comforting squeeze, and after a few seconds, he voiced the question he’d had from the beginning.

“You haven’t told your family?”

Her body spasmed in something that was not unlike a sob, and the waver in her voice told him the tears had started again. He hated himself for causing her pain, but you had to cut out the bullet before you could heal.

“I don’t know how. Things have been looking up ever since I bought this place and got off the streets. They were so wonderful and understanding when I moved back in with them for a little bit after everything that happened when Harry came back as a ghost.”

Carlos was still in the dark about that time in Chicago. That was on purpose. After the Red Court and Harry Dresden died, he’d been far too busy as acting regional commander of the _entire_ United States to do anything but stop in every couple of months and recite lines with Karrin. He’d sweep into Mac’s pub with a melodramatic swirl of his gray cloak and, in front of most of the Chicago magical community, she’d give him the supernatural equivalent of, “Is there a problem, Officer?” complete with fluttering eyelashes. He’d loudly proclaim that the White Council was doing everything it could to keep Chicago safe, but dark magic was still evil and the Ragged Lady was not a good role model. Then she’d buy him a beer, he’d ask her about Molly, and she’d make him feel guilty by asking “stupid” questions about why the White Council wanted her. She’d tell him the B.F.S. had things under control, and he’d trusted that they did because he’d needed to focus his attention on other places — like L.A. After whatever the hell had gone down, he tried to have a real conversation, but she stuck to their standard script — “Oh, just some ghosts, Officer. Nothing our little Better Future Society couldn’t handle.” Harry’s turn as Patrick Swayze was barely an afterthought, and Molly didn’t feature at all.

So Carlos didn’t know “everything that happened,” and when Molly shuddered and pulled his arms tighter around her, he forced away images of her alone and hungry on the winter streets of Chicago and decided he didn’t want to know.

“They’ve finally stopped worrying about me. I tell them I’m doing important work, which I am, and they’re proud of me, almost like when I was Harry’s apprentice.” She sniffed and squeezed their still intertwined fingers. “I have a hard enough time dealing with it myself. How am I supposed to tell them that I have more power than a god, lowercase G, and I’m going to live forever, but my soul’s going to fade out of existence, and I don’t know when?”

Her tone rose to a falsely chipper pitch. “‘The good news is I’m not a warlock on the run anymore. The bad news is I won’t be able to spend Eternity with you guys. Sorry, Dad.’” She huffed out a breath and her voice returned to normal. “I don’t need their fucking pity.”

Carlos had met Michael Carpenter only once, at Molly’s trial. The man had returned from rescuing the Captain of the Wardens, several members of the Senior Council, and dozens of trainees only to find the Merlin of the White Council preparing to pass a death sentence on his daughter. If Carlos had been in the Knight’s chainmail, he’d have gone all Fist of God on everyone present — which was probably why he’d never be offered one of the Swords of the Cross. Michael Carpenter had merely hugged and held his daughter while the Senior Council debated, patiently awaiting whatever judgment came down.

And his wife, Charity, in spite of all of Harry’s horror stories about her legendary wrath, was bad-ass enough to rescue her daughter from Arctis Tor and apparently trustworthy enough that Harry had left his own daughter in her care for several years.

Carlos couldn’t imagine either of them reacting in any way other than patient strength and unwavering support of Molly.

But even he was surprised by the intensity of his sudden anger. He pulled away from her sharply and sat up. “Your family is proud of you, your father is one of the kindest, most understanding human beings on the planet, and your mother fought her way to Artis Tor to save you, but you won’t tell them that you’re dying because you don’t want them to pity you? I can’t believe how stupid and selfish that is. They deserve to know. They love you, and you have no fucking idea how lucky you are.”

As he spoke, Molly abruptly sat up to face him. The air chilled with the wrath of Winter, but something he said extinguished it almost before it started.

Her face softened. “Do you honestly think your family doesn’t love you?”

“This isn’t about me,” he snapped. “This is about you keeping your family in the dark because you’re too much of a coward to tell them what’s really going on.”

She flinched at the epithet, and he regretted it. She remained frozen in her wince.

“I have unfathomable power at the expense of my soul,” she whispered. “They’re Catholic. What if they —”

“They won’t,” he said firmly.

“You don’t know that.”

“You didn’t choose this,” he said. “It’s like if you were diagnosed with cancer or something. This thing happened to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. From everything I know about your family, I can’t imagine them being anything but understanding. Don’t you think —” An empty, lonely cavern that had nothing to do with Molly or her situation gaped wide in his chest. “Won’t it be easier to bear with them to support you?”

She started to speak, then stopped; her face cycled through anger, guilt, indecision, and sadness before finally settling on resignation.

She sighed. “You’re right.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” He didn’t snap this time, but that sharp, caustic edge had made its way back into his voice, even without his back pain.

Her face switched so quickly to concern that he wondered if she could feel his emotions again. She placed a hand on his arm. “Why do you think your family doesn’t love you?”

“Oh, I know they love me.” He settled with his back against the headboard and rested his forearms on his knees. “They just don’t like me very much. If not for familial obligation, they’d disown me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“And you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about,” he said. “They’ve never understood what I do. At least your family tries. Mine don’t believe in magic, and they don’t understand why I can’t just marry a beautiful Latina who will pop out boy after Spanish-speaking boy while I run the restaurant like a ‘real Ramirez.’”

At the last words, he deepened his voice in a mocking impression of his father.

“But I’m just a big fat disappointment because I’m never around and I don’t date or bring girls home. I mean, I try to tell him that I’m a pretty much a cop, and I carry around my super manly sword and staff and my big-ass gun and grenades, but, well.” He shrugged. “Let’s just say that my _abuela_ probably prays for me for a whole host of reasons, and my satanic magic is only one of them. And no, telling them I lost my virginity at age thirty to a freaking faerie queen will probably not help any of my cases.”

He tried to summon his grin, but it seemed to be on the fritz. “Though it would probably give his homophobic ass a heart attack.”

She shifted on the bed until she was in the same position next to him. She didn’t reach out to him, but she was so close that her shoulders and legs made firm, comforting contact with his.

“Were they there?” she asked. “When you were injured?”

He forced a laugh, and it tasted bitter. “Oh, yeah, sure. I wake up in the hospital, really drugged and in a ton of pain. The doctors tell me I was lucky to have survived and not been paralyzed, and my Wardens tell me that the two kids I was trying to save died. My dad was the first person in my family to say anything, and he bitched me out for being stupid and irresponsible and thinking I’m some sort of, quote, ‘fairy wizard person.’ After he stormed out, _Abuela_ begged me to stop with the, I quote again, ‘devil nonsense,’ because it’s corrupting my soul.” His voice hitched. “And my mother and sisters didn’t say a damned thing.”

“But they were there.”

He snorted.

She was silent for a few moments.

“Once, when my dad was still a Knight, he was injured pretty bad and had to be hospitalized for a little while. My mom and I sat with him until he woke up, and she immediately started yelling at him for not being careful enough. He sat there and nodded and promised her he’d be more careful in the future, but that made her angrier until she finally just left. I was so pissed at her for being such a bitch, and I asked him why he didn’t fight back. He smiled and said, ‘How could I fight with her when she’s telling me she loves me?’”

Carlos stared at her, unblinking. “And you think that guy’s going to judge you for this whole Winter Lady business?”

She threw him one of Luisa’s _Don’t-push-me-Carlito_ looks. “I already said you were right about that. Do you want me to engrave it on a medal or something?”

He tilted his head in consideration.

“My point is,” she said, stressing each word, “that people respond to grief and worry in different ways. But they were there for you. Did you ever wake up alone?”

He turned away, but shook his head. When he was at his lowest, even after they’d yelled or lectured or stayed silent, someone was always at his bedside.

“Did you ever sit them down and explain what happened when you were injured? Or were they left to sit next to your bed, watching you suffer, wondering what had happened and worrying that it would happen again?”

He said nothing, which was apparently enough answer for Molly.

“How would you feel if the roles were reversed?” she asked. “Do you think you might yell? Do you think you might be angry? Do you think you might try whatever you could to encourage them to be safe?”

His throat burned. He would have done all of that and then some if any member of his family had been injured like he had.

“Do not try to tell me they don’t love you,” she said. “And it’s obvious how much you love them, even if I hadn’t felt it when we soulgazed.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Although it does explain why you haven’t told your grandmother that you turned your rosary into a focus.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re really hung up on that, aren’t you?”

She pulled her legs under her and turned to face him eagerly. “Because it’s amazing. You carefully and deliberately carved a rune into every bead, the centerpiece, and the crucifix.”

“Leave no part un-blasphemed, I always say.”

“I know you don’t believe that,” she continued, her enthusiasm undamped by his snark. “I’ve never felt so much power in such a small focus. I bet it’s almost as powerful as your staff.”

“Nothing is as powerful as my staff,” he said with a flash of his cocky grin.

Molly regarded him with a frigid stare. He recoiled immediately, but not from the cold of Winter; this was a familiar cold, like that in the eyes of his _abuela_ or mother or sisters when he said something sexist or insensitive. He barely managed to restrain himself from pulling the covers over his head and groveling for forgiveness.

“ _Madre de Dios_ ,” he muttered. “Put that away.”

“I would,” she said lightly. “But my clothes are over there.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. Damn, he liked it when she smacked him into line. Especially when she did it by giving him a taste of his own medicine.

“Why the rosary?” she asked.

For some reason, answering that seemed more intimate than anything they’d discussed previously. No one knew about his rosary, not even his fellow Wardens. He kept it in a secret pocket, out of sight but always available if necessary. A part of him wanted to keep it a secret, something that only belonged to him.

And yet, he’d shared so much of himself with her this evening, he was no longer sure she wasn’t an extension of him.

He shrugged. “It was a gift. First Communion. Blessed by the Pope.”

“Nice.”

He looked at her, trying to figure out if she was mocking him or not, but she seemed honestly impressed. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, his mother always said.

“After I almost died in the zombie-pocalypse and got promoted to regional commander, my _abuela_ started putting my rosary in my pocket. She was convinced it would keep me safe. I took it out because I didn’t want to lose it, but she kept putting it back. We did that dance for a while before I gave up and sewed a special pocket into my cloak for it. That worked for years. Never lost it. Not even when …”

His hand had moved to cover his most recent scar unconsciously, but he stopped himself and rested it on his knee instead.

The gesture didn’t go unnoticed by Molly. She placed her hand on top of his and said, “You’re safe here.”

He twined their fingers together. “It was sitting on the table next to my bed when I woke up in the hospital. But it hadn’t kept me safe. I had a lot of free time while I was recovering for eight months, so I made it into something that might actually protect me.”

“Belief is a powerful protection. I’ve seen it.”

“Well, I’m no Knight of the Cross.”

She closed her eyes and said nothing for a while. “I can feel its power from here. Can you?”

He could if he intentionally extended his magical senses. But then he wasn’t a freaking Queen of Faerie, either.

“You have faith,” she said. “In your love for them all. That’s what makes it so powerful.” She opened her eyes. “You know that, right?”

He folded his hands behind his head. “I know you’ve recently been promoted, but I was actually appointed the youngest regional commander in the history of the White Council before you even knew there was one. But by all means, please continue to condescendingly explain magical theory to me, Lady.”

He said it with a genuinely amused smile, but she had the grace to look a bit ashamed.

“I don’t know your _abuela_ ,” she said. “But if you honestly think that, if you explained to her what you did to your rosary and why and what makes it so powerful, that she would be angry or disappointed in you — well, it doesn’t seem like you know her, either.”

They were both quiet for a long time. Carlos was thinking about his family, and how he hadn’t talked to them seriously about magic since — well, since before he was promoted to regional commander. But maybe that hadn’t been quite fair. Maybe it was downright selfish.

Maybe it was time to listen to Raul again.

“Fine,” he said finally. “I’ll tell my _abuela_ about my rosary —”

She opened her mouth to interrupt.

“— and try to be more open with my family about what I do,” he said, resigned. “If you tell your family that you’re the new Winter Lady.”

He held out his pinky.

She soberly extended her own pinky finger, and they shook.

 

* * *

 

“My God, you’re freezing,” she said, releasing his pinky finger and wrapping both her hands around his. “And if you quote _Frozen_ at me again, I will punch you in the mouth.”

“I would never,” he said. He honestly hadn’t noticed the cold. Was that because of how warm she made him feel?

“Come on, under the covers.” She shuffled from her sitting position to lay next to him.

He followed her example and watched in wry amusement as she fastidiously tucked him in before snuggling up against him.

He cocked an eyebrow. “You done?”

She tossed him another Luisa glare before finally settling down. He pulled her toward him until she was half-laying on top of him, her head against his chest, his arms wrapped around her.

She let out a tiny, contented moan.

“So.” He let out a heavy sigh that was only partly for show. “In the soulgaze you saw that I love my family, huh? How cliché. I’d hoped I was a little more interesting than that.”

“You are more interesting than that, _amorcito_ ,” she said, meeting his gaze. “Yours is the most beautiful soul I’ve ever felt, too.”

His heart danced, and it became painful to swallow. But the curious wizard in him noticed it was the second time she’d used that word. “Felt?”

She nodded. “When I soulgaze with someone, I experience the important moments of their life with them. I see what they see, hear what they hear, but most importantly I feel what they feel. Emotionally.”

“You know, that’s pretty cool, too,” he said. “And it definitely makes sense for you.” His stomach fluttered like it did before a battle. “So, uh — What did you feel?”

She grinned. “You’ve been waiting all night to ask that, haven’t you?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but there was no use. He smiled sheepishly.

“It’s only fair, I guess,” she said. “I conveniently feel souls in chronological order, thank goodness. The first thing I felt was the immense relief and sheer, unadulterated joy of a boy learning that this thing that made him so weird and lonely actually made him special. I felt his disappointment and guilt upon learning that magic couldn’t fix his little sister’s broken wrist, and his burning, fervent hope when his kind old mentor explained that someday he could use his magic to save the world.”

Carlos’s face grew hot, but she wasn’t laughing at him. She was smiling in … admiration?

“I felt his boundless excitement when he performed his first spell — a little spritz of water pulled from the air around him. His glowing pride when, as a young man, he was appointed to the White Council, and Captain Luccio allowed his mentor to present him with his very own Warden cloak and sword.”

Her smile melted away, a deep frown solidifying in its place.

“I felt the guilt and helplessness and hopeless grief as that young man knelt beside his mentor, cold and lifeless and covered in blood, except for that damned gray cloak.”

Carlos closed his eyes as everything blurred in front of him. His chest tightened, even a decade later, at the thought of Raul. That day remained one of the worst of his life. There were so many things he’d wished he’d said or done — or not done.

“You loved him so much,” she said, taking his hand.

He didn’t deny it.

“He’d be so proud of you, Carlos.”

He didn’t argue with that, either, but he didn’t believe it.

“That was when you started to pull away from your family, wasn’t it?”

He shook his head and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “After that I didn’t have anyone to keep pushing me back.”

Openness with family had always been Raul’s number one rule. When Carlos was an apprentice, Raul regularly attended Sunday dinner, informing the family about his progress. Carlos would never forget Raul’s response when, as an angsty teenager, he started to rebel against that.

“They won’t be around forever, Carlito,” he’d said with a deep sadness that Carlos had never gotten the chance to ask him about. “And you’ll have centuries to regret wasting what little time you had.”

After he died, Carlos had found life to be far easier by ignoring that particular lesson.

He didn’t tell Molly any of that, but when she shifted her arms to hug him, he knew she’d understood.

“You found people who understood you better, anyway,” she said. “I felt that young man’s joy, a fire rekindled — a new hope, so to speak —” Her eyes twinkled like icicles in starlight. “— when he spun around on his barstool in a dingy Chicago dive and saw a tall, loud, crazy wizard putting on a gray cloak, bitching the whole way. The feelings of belonging and excitement and _fun_ during a battle, riding on a God-damned tyrannosaurus rex.”

She actually laughed then. He returned it with a small smile.

“I felt his sad mixture of pride and regret at being promoted to regional commander, his frustration and anger at all that responsibility when he couldn’t even legally drink. His determination to rise to the challenge and prove to everyone that he was worthy of their trust. His guilt whenever he lost civilians he’d sworn to protect, or Wardens, or —”  Her voice grew soft. “Or trainees he’d been teaching. And the righteous rage that allowed him to avenge their deaths.”

Her eyes suddenly shone bright. “I felt his absolute devastation and emptiness when he received a phone call telling him of another death, one he thought could never happen because the bastard was too damned stubborn to actually die. And that grief became guilt at once again failing to save someone he cared about. Regret at once again leaving too many things unsaid.”

He dropped his gaze. This was the shitty part about soulgazes. The two-way-ness. And the permanentness. And the burden of someone else’s pain. And — everything about them was pretty shitty, actually, which was why he tried to avoid them.

She cleared her throat. “Can I add something to our pinky swear?”

He glanced at her with a raised an eyebrow.

“Tell him.”

“No.” He shook his head. Vehemently. “Absolutely not. Never in a million, billion years.”

“Carlos —”

“He’d just be a dick about it. He’d say something sarcastic and nasty and make it out like I’m some stupid kid who doesn’t know a good role model from a hole in the ground.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But that’s why you need to say it. He’s in a really dark place right now.”

“That’s what happens when you sell your soul to the Queen of Air and Darkness,” he snapped.

“I felt that, too,” she said. “The bitterness and betrayal. But from what I hear, he already knows about that.” She pressed her lips together, but the smile was evident in her voice. “The black eye lasted for weeks and went through all the colors of the rainbow. Karrin said she cheered and bought you a beer after. I’m pretty sure everyone who’s ever met him has imagined doing that at least once.”

Carlos didn’t doubt it. He’d wanted to hit the bastard for years, and it had felt amazing to finally let loose.

“He’s frightened of what he’ll become,” Molly said. “If he inspired you to be better … he needs to hear that more than you know.”

“I’ll think about it,” Carlos said in the hopes of ending the discussion. “But I’m not pinky-swearing to anything.”

That seemed to satisfy her.

She made a face between a frown and a wince, as though trying to remember something painful.

“The soulgaze got fuzzy after that, skipping around. But I felt the grief turn to guilt turn to cynicism and doubt that you could use magic to save people when all it seemed to do was make things worse. The cold, hard anger at everything and everyone, from your family to the Council to the Fomor to Harry Fucking Dresden, and the hopelessness that you’d ever be able to protect your city and its people and _your_ people against all the awful things in the world. The hatred of everything, starting and ending with yourself for not being able to save everyone.”

He squeezed his eyes shut to keep the tears in. It hurt to hear his heart laid bare like that. He was fucking broken, and he didn’t know how to fix himself.

She turned his face to her, stroking his cheek with her thumb and wiping away a tear that had escaped. Their foreheads touched, and he opened his eyes to see her smiling at him.

“And after all that, I felt his overwhelming love and gratitude when he woke up to his family. He didn’t think he’d see them again, but there they all were — his parents, his grandmother, his sisters and their families. He was angry and frustrated and guilty, too, but his strongest emotion was a deep, strong, unconditional love.”

She kissed him softly.

“You are not a cliché, _amorcito_. You’re so much more than that. I was wrong earlier when I said you didn’t have hope. It’s always been there, just hidden beneath all your pain. Somehow, in spite of everything that you’ve seen, you still have this idealism, this faith that you _can_ save everyone, despite all evidence to the contrary, and damn it, you’re going to keep trying if it’s the last thing you ever do.”

 _Dios_ , that was him to a T. Was that what people saw when they soulgazed with him? Did they see a good man who was determined to save everyone or die trying?

“I haven’t felt the tug of a soulgaze since I became Winter Lady,” she said. “I think the mantle prevents it — it even did with you a few times. So I’ve gotten out of the habit of avoiding people’s eyes. But if this was my last one, I am so grateful to end with your soul.”

Her eyes roamed up and down his face for what seemed like ages, and she seemed about to burst with — something he refused to name. He only knew it made his heart ache because it would never be what he wanted.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow —”

“Please, don’t.” His voice was rough. “Can we talk about tomorrow tomorrow?”

He wanted to have tonight without the heartbreak.

She waited for a patient moment and said, “I was going to say that I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I don’t want to have any regrets about tonight, either. So.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Even though I don’t know if it would stand up to the cruel light of day, I do know that tonight, right now … I love you, Carlos.”

 

* * *

 

 

Time seemed to slow. Had he heard her correctly? He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. The world grew fuzzy.

He opened his mouth to ask, “What?” but only an odd choking noise came out.

She … loved him?

Him?

He blinked rapidly, and when his vision cleared, all he saw was Molly, hair shining like fresh snow, eyes glittering like stars on a clear Winter night.

Words — and jokes, and cocky grins — failed him.

She _loved_ him.

She loved _him_.

He thrust his hands into her hair and kissed her with all the passion he’d been holding back, until they were both breathless.

“I love you, too.”

“Say it in Spanish.” Her lips moved against his as they formed the request.

He pulled back so he could look into her eyes and said, without hesitation, “ _Te amo, amorcita_.”

He shouldn’t have. _Amar_ was far too strong — it was what spouses said to each other. Not even family members said _Te amo_.

But he knew he’d never get another chance to say it to her.

And somehow, even _Te amo_ didn’t seem strong enough.

She let out a whimper and kissed him back, with a passion of her own so intense it left him lightheaded.

“ _Te amo, amorcito,_ ” she said.

His heart leapt, and he threw her to the bed beside him, entwining his limbs with hers.

It was a little unfair — she didn’t know how strong it was. But he needed to hear those words from her again.

“I love you,” he breathed. “ _Te amo también._ ”

They took turns repeating it in between kisses that grew more and more passionate, but he found he didn’t want anything more.

Just Molly, just kissing, just those words, in English and _español_. That was enough.

“Wait a minute.” He broke away as a sudden thought struck him.

She didn’t respond except to follow him, attempting to kiss him again, but he stopped her. She actually gave a little pout, which almost made him lose track of his thought.

But this was way too important.

“Before, when I said ‘I love you,’ did you say, ‘I know’?”

Her eyes widened, and she pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

“ _Madre de Dios_.” He shook his head. “You quoted Han Solo from _The Empire Strikes Back_ at me.”

She bit her lip, swollen and pink from the kissing, but that didn’t stop the giggle from escaping.

“No,” she said, gathering herself and tossing her head haughtily. “I quoted Leia from _Return of the Jedi_.”

“You are so hot right now.”

She actually giggled this time. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You know that makes it even hotter, right?”

She laughed, and her theme reverberated around the room, engulfing and enveloping him in its warmth.

“Plus,” he said. “It confirms something I already know.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“That I’m Han Solo.”

“I don’t know, I see you as more of a Luke.”

He jaw dropped in utter horror.

“He’s the hero!” she protested. “He’s good from the start and joins the Rebellion as soon as he gets the chance because it’s the right thing to do. He struggles with controlling his feelings, and sometimes with knowing the difference between the Light and Dark sides. Plus,” she added. “He carries around a sword that hums with power and can slice through anything.”

He blinked and opened and closed his mouth a few times, which she seemed to enjoy immensely.

“I’m sorry, did I ruin your fantasy?”

She didn’t sound sorry at all.

“It’s not a —” He took a breath to calm himself. “I’m _clearly_ Han. First of all, I’m devastatingly handsome.”

Molly tipped her head in acknowledgment. “You do flash that sexy, cocky grin all the time.”

He flashed said sexy, cocky grin. “I’m basically a Hispanic Harrison Ford.”

Her laugh echoed through his soul. “Okay, I’ll give you that. What else?”

“My sarcasm and wit just sweep the women off their feet.”

“If they don’t want to strangle you first,” she said. “So, fine, I’ll give you that one, too.”

“I’m so brilliant and talented that everyone else looks bland by comparison.”

When she raised a skeptical eyebrow, he started to tick things off on his fingers.

“Han Solo made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs; I made regional commander before I could legally drink. Han Solo is a legendary smuggler; I’m a legendary Warden. Han Solo was frozen in carbonite but survived to be an invaluable asset to the Rebellion; my enemies thought they’d killed me, but here I am, systematically kicking their asses out of my town. Plus, I banter nigh unintelligibly with my tall, loud friend who throws around a lot of firepower and is really … _Harry_.”

She groaned. “That was a Dresden-level pun. Shame on you.”

Carlos grinned and played his trump card. “And I fell in love with a princess who’s way out of my league.”

She blushed furiously.

“Well,” he pretended to correct himself. “You were a princess. Now you’re my very own Queen Elsa.”

She smiled shyly. “Yours?”

“For tonight, _amorcita_. If that’s all right with you.”

“As long as you’re mine, _amorcito_.”

“Lady, I’ve been yours since I first saw you this evening.”

To his surprise, her eyes welled with tears. She gave a watery chuckle. “Yep, definitely Han. Luke would never be that smooth. So, not only do you get all my geeky sci-fi references even when I don’t realize I’m making them, but you’ve clearly given a lot of thought to even geekier comparisons to your own life?” She sighed. “I am definitely in love.”

Carlos smiled his best, happiest, most brilliant smile and kissed her.

“One more question,” he said. “How did you know?”

His stomach clenched at a thought — had she been able to feel his roller coaster of emotions all night?

“I didn’t,” she said, once again in answer to his thoughts rather than anything he actually said. “I don’t know how. I just … knew. It was something about the way you looked at me after the soulgaze.”

“Damn,” he said. “So much for my game face.”

She giggled and pulled him toward her. “Shut up and kiss me.”

They lay entwined together like that, kissing and professing their love, until their passion ebbed and the immense physical and emotional tolls of the evening finally caught up with them.

He was half-asleep himself when her lips didn’t respond to his. He forced his eyes open and took in the peaceful beauty of her sleeping form.

He brushed her hair from her face, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “ _Buenas noches, amorcita. Te amo._ ”

She gave a little sigh, and her lips curled into the slightest smile. His let his eyes droop closed and drifted into deepest, most peaceful night’s sleep he’d had in years.


	11. Chapter 11

Carlos was awakened the next morning, as he was every morning, by pain.

Before he even opened his eyes, he ran through his breathing exercises, as he did every morning.

Then he ran through them a second time, as he did some mornings, when the the first set failed to reduce the pain sufficiently.

Most mornings, two sets were enough to shrink his back pain to manageable levels.

This was not most mornings.

With a sigh born of resignation and bone-deep weariness, he opened his eyes.

And yelped as a rude light assaulted his eyeballs. He hastily covered his face with one of his half a dozen down pillows — his only luxury in his tiny studio apartment, if modest support for his injured back could be considered a luxury.

When the pain in his head — which throbbed in time to a melody just out of reach of recognition — had subsided to a dull ache, he peeked out from underneath the pillow. Sunlight intruded into his room through open blinds, which was not at all like every morning; he always closed them before going to sleep. Not only were open blinds a massive security risk, but he had enough trouble sleeping without the lights from the city keeping him awake.

Open blinds were also, apparently, a health risk, as his pounding head could attest. He extended his arm toward the blind-cord several feet away, wishing, as he often did (though he would never admit it aloud) that he was a Jedi and his magic was the Force. _This isn’t the room you’re looking for._ After a few moments of vain struggling, his arm sagged in defeat.

The twin-bell alarm clock on his bedside table proudly proclaimed _7:17_. Stupid sun coming through his stupid open blinds this stupid early on a Saturday.

Careful not to move his back or his deliberately positioned pillow-shield, he turned his head to his dresser on the other side of the room, less than five feet from the foot of his twin bed. It doubled as a hall table since it was just inside the door and tripled as a medicine cabinet of sorts. Behind the chaos of keys, various foci, and random personal items, an army of seven clearly labeled sports bottles stood at attention against the wall. Friday’s was still full.

He’d forgotten to take his pain potion last night.

He let out a whimper that dreamed of becoming a groan when it grew up. The last time he’d forgotten to take a potion, he’d nearly been killed twice: first, when the pain from a sudden twist had brought him to his knees during a fight with a Fomor; and second, when said fight had made him arrive late — and not in party clothes — to his sister Sofia’s twentieth birthday party. That day he’d learned just how much Fomor and sisters had in common in the _terrifying_ and _deadly_ departments.

And this morning, in addition to the standard back pain aggravated by forgetting his potion, his entire body ached for some reason, with special emphasis on his head, forearms, and, most disturbingly, groin.

Today was going to suck.

He adjusted his head so his pillow-shield blocked out all the sunlight, closed his eyes, and tried to fall back into his dream. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, it had actually been a nice one.

His lips curled into a grin. Molly Carpenter. Talk about a blast from the past. The first thing he remembered from his dream was visiting Harry in Chicago, and then they’d gone back to Karrin’s, and there she was. She’d offered to walk him home, but they’d talked and soulgazed, and she’d invited him to her place which had been built by svartalves. They’d opened up to each other and he’d cried about his life — _Dios_ , even in his dreams he was awful in the bedroom — but she’d been understanding, and then —

And then they’d had _sex_.

And then he’d said he loved her.

And then _she’d said it back_.

He burst into a laugh that wrenched his back, but not even that could dampen the humor of the scenario. He buried his face in the pillow, eyes filling with amused tears, and laughed until he wheezed, finishing with a final, pitiful whimper.

_Madre de Dios,_ he was pathetic.

Only in his dreams would a fucking faerie queen ever be interested in him.

A horrible thought struck him, and he sat bolt upright, regretting it instantly as a jolt of pain shot up his back and sunlight drilled fresh, agonizing holes into his head.

He _had_ gone to Chicago last night to see Harry. They’d been planning it for weeks — his first night off since he’d been approved to return to duty about a year ago. He’d even called Warden Bishop to come down from Portland and keep an eye on things for the night, which she’d only done after much bitching on her part and bribes of liquor on his. He and Harry had gone to dinner at Mac’s pub, Harry had told him all about his adorable daughter Maggie and his mind-baby — er, spirit of intellect. And then …

And then they’d gone back to Karrin’s and met Molly. But _that_ hadn’t been real. How in the hell had he gotten home?

He tried with limited success to quell a rising panic. Memory gaps were bad news in his business. Mental magic was no fucking joke, and ever since the whole clusterfuck with Peabody …

He stumbled to his feet, letting out a particularly nasty curse at his body’s protests. He’d call Harry first to see if he could fill in the blanks. It was possible, probable even, that they’d just gotten hammered. Mac’s ale was that good, and Carlos’s life had been that shitty lately. He did have a massive headache, and if his recent stint as a trainer at Luccio’s bootcamp had taught him anything, it was that Harry’s prophecy had come to pass and he was, indeed, getting old with respect to bouncing back from nights of excessive drinking.

He snatched up the phone and started to dial Harry’s number. If Harry couldn’t help, he’d have to call the Captain and tell her that he might have been compromised, and —

His left index finger froze above the buttons. Wrapped tightly around its tip was a purple bandaid sporting Queen Elsa and the words _Let it go!_

Music erupted in his head, and he staggered backward at the sheer force of it — a fun, quirky piano melody accompanied by syncopated strings and mysterious woodwinds, interrupted by erratic explosions of cellos, bass, and percussion. And every note conjured Molly — on the sidewalk, on top of him, laughing, crying, coming, in his mouth, eating ice cream, kissing him, asleep in his arms. The sight and sound and smell and feel and taste of her nearly overwhelmed him, and he had to lean against his bedside table to keep from collapsing into a puddle on the floor.

It took three tries to get the receiver back in its cradle, and then he turned to regard his apartment. The window to one side of him; the bed, closet, bathroom, dresser, and door on the other. His crappy couch and kitchenette (sans refrigerator because _wizard_ and also he didn’t do anything but sleep here) directly across from the bed, about fifteen feet away.

The whole tiny thing, as cramped and empty and lonely as usual.

“Molly?” he said, as if the Winter Lady was going to pop out from behind a veil and yell _Surprise!_

Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

He rubbed his face with both hands and slapped his cheeks for good measure.

It _was_ a dream.

Wasn’t it?

 

* * *

 

As he turned back to the phone, debating whether or not to call Harry, a flicker of light caught his eye. There, slipped almost surreptitiously between the phone and the clock, was a card. He warily extended his magical senses to it but didn’t feel anything dark or even untoward.

He snatched it up before he could second-guess himself. About the size of a standard thank-you note, it bore a large, opalescent snowflake that lay flush with the paper and glittered with its own, eerie light.

His heart thudded in his chest. He had an inkling who it was from, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it said.

Who the hell was he kidding? Of course he wanted to know what it said.

He opened the card with shaking fingers. It was filled, above and below the fold, with loopy, clearly hurried, and increasingly cramped writing in an iridescent ink that looked blue or purple or green, depending on how the light fell on it.

 

> _Amorcito,_
> 
> _Grab onto something because I’m about to blow your mind._
> 
> _It wasn’t a dream. It all really happened._

 

Carlos sat down on the bed abruptly. It wasn’t a dream. It all really happened. Holy fuck. That meant that he — that she — that _they_ — He couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around what that meant.

 

> _It’s nearly dawn now, and Mab just called me. When Mab calls, you don’t say no. I don’t want you to wake up alone in a strange place, so when you read this, you’ll be at home, fully clothed. Don’t ask how — it’s a trade secret. If I told you, I’d have to decide to kill you, but in the end have a change of heart because you swept me off your feet by being so damned talented and good-looking._
> 
> _You’re sleeping soundly right now, and you look so peaceful that I can’t bring myself to wake you. It seems especially cruel to wake you up only to send you home when there’s no time to have a proper conversation. It probably says something about me that I’m writing this instead of saying it to your face, but I think this will be easier for both of us._
> 
> _Last night was one of the greatest nights of my entire life. I will treasure it, and all the memories I have of you, forever. And I mean that literally. I have no regrets._
> 
> _But —_

 

Carlos closed the card and set it gently on the bedside table. He slowly lay back onto the bed, closed his eyes, and ran through his breathing exercises again, trying to focus away the cold, dense tightness in his chest. But though that sometimes eased the pain in his back, it never seemed to help with emotional turmoil.

The frozen tension grew until he thought he might explode from the pressure. He thrust a pillow into his face just in time to catch a single, lonely sob and the hot wetness that accompanied it.

_Madre de Dios_ , he was so stupid. What had he been expecting? Happily ever after? They’d had an amazing night together. One of the greatest nights of her life, she’d said. He felt the same. But …

But, but, but. There was always a but.

_It’s been fun, but I don’t really see you that way._

_You’re cute, but you’re too young and not my type._

_We had a great night last night, but I’m a faerie queen and it wouldn’t work out._

Maybe he was a coward, but he just couldn’t force himself to read another rejection. He preferred to remember their wonderful night together as it was, soulgaze and sex and laughter and tears and grilled cheese and ice cream and yes, _love_ , without the sting of heartbreak.

Even if he didn’t get to say goodbye, or hold her in his arms and kiss her one last time.

Just an amazing night. One time only, no encores. That was enough.

It had to be.

 

* * *

 

A loud, shrill ring startled him from his misery. He was on his feet, a Ramirez Green Blast of Destruction (Patent Pending) humming in his right hand, wiping his cheeks with his left, Lamaze-breathing through the white-hot pain in his back — hooray for pregnant sisters dragging him to classes as a husband-substitute — before he realized it was only his phone.

He released the spell, flopped dejectedly back onto the bed with a curse of pain, and let his ancient, dual cassette SANYO answering machine — circa 1975 and thus safe from all but the most intense wizardly emotions — pick it up.

His cocky voice message — warbling slightly due to current intense wizardly emotions — shattered the stillness of the apartment.

_“You have reached the phone of Carlos Ramirez. If you’re hearing this message, I’m probably out, sweeping the world off its feet with my brilliance, talent, and God-like sense of humility. Leave a message, and I’ll try to fit you into my busy schedule.”_

_Dios_ , he was such an obnoxious prick sometimes.

A loud click as the incoming cassette engaged, and _Abuela_ ’s fast and gentle Spanish rattled over the line.

_“_ Mijo _, this is the fourth message I’ve left. You said you’d call when you returned last night, but we haven’t heard anything. We’re all worried sick. I tried calling your friend in Chicago, but he said he didn’t know where you were, either.”_

Carlos groaned and buried his face in the pillow again. _Abuela_ had called Harry? He’d never live that one down. That was even worse than the virgin thing.

“You’ve got an urgent message here from one of your friends.”

No matter how many times he explained, she refused to acknowledge that the people who called the restaurant were his _subordinates_ , calling him to check in or report happenings in his area of command, which basically covered everything west of the Rockies — and essentially everything east of the Rockies, too, since Wild Bill Meyers, who was filling in for technically-alive-but-not-yet-reinstated Regional Commander Dresden, was much better at taking out bad guys than regionally commanding the eastern United States.

If one of the messages at the restaurant was urgent, someone probably needed back-up.

_“Please call the restaurant as soon as you get this. I’m praying to St. Michael that you’re safe,_ mijo _. I love you.”_

The machine clicked off.

St. Michael the archangel was the patron saint of soldiers and police officers  — and also doctors, grocers, and sickness, because the Catholic Church was nothing if not randomly assigning saints to causes. St. Michael’s main job was to lead the army of the Lord against Satan.

As much as she railed against the evil of his magic and called his subordinates his friends, _Abuela_ ’s prayers to St. Michael seemed to show that she knew, deep down, that he was fighting the good fight.

His throat burned, and that frozen tightness in his chest ached anew. He smushed the pillow almost painfully against his face. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to lay here all day in the silence and solitude and lick his wounds.

With a ferocious roar, he launched the pillow across the room, knocking the phone to the floor with a loud clang.

Damn Karrin Murphy for getting his hopes up. Making time was for people who had the luxury of nursing a broken heart. He didn’t.

He had people depending on him.

So he dragged himself to his feet and shuffled to the bathroom, but not before placing the phone back on the hook. If one of his Wardens had left an urgent message at the restaurant, he couldn’t afford to miss any more calls.

Last night was the first night he’d taken off in more than a year. In spite of everyone’s insistence to the contrary, he regarded his eight months of recovery as a sort of forced vacation, which had resulted in the kidnapping of at least a dozen kids and the death of one of his Wardens. Once he was approved for duty, he’d worked extra hard to try to make up for lost … everything.

It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was a workaholic (as his sisters called him) or a control freak (as his Wardens called him). And it definitely wasn’t a distraction from the pain and depression and anger and guilt.

_“The Council already dictates most of your life. You need, you deserve, to unwind.”_

No — she didn’t get to live in his head, in musical or quaint proverbial form. She’d written him a Dear John letter, for fuck’s sake.

His stomach churned with guilt at the thought. He didn’t want to be angry with her; he just wished he hadn’t given her so much of himself last night — the part of his chest that now gaped empty and lonely.

On his way past the dresser/hall table/medicine cabinet, he snagged Saturday’s potion bottle with considerably more force than necessary and downed it in three gulps. It almost came back up; after two years, he could still barely stand its bitter taste. Listens-to-Wind told him any changes to the potion would affect its potency, but Carlos secretly wondered if the old wizard wasn’t putting one over on him. Greatest magical healer in the world, and he couldn’t figure out a way to make it taste like bubble gum? But the ingredients were too expensive and the recipe too time-intensive for Carlos to experiment with it — not to mention his pain bad enough that he couldn’t afford to deal with potential side-effects — so moderate pain relief with a side of bile it was.

As he stripped off his clothes and tended to his morning necessities, he took stock of his body. Last night had left physical as well as emotional marks: he had quite the goose-egg on the back of his head, his chest bore a raw, pink streak, and the bruises on his forearms couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what they were — the marks of an inhumanly strong grip. Fortunately, they didn’t hurt too terribly or look too obvious; nothing that several aspirin and a vague reference to his dangerous job couldn’t handle. His groin was, of course, the only part of him that felt far worse than it looked, probably because he’d never used those muscles in quite that way before and also because karma was clearly catching up to him for all those years of bragging about fictional sexual exploits.

(Which, in his defense, he had only kicked into overdrive as another way — along with his ill-advised and short-lived goatee — to try to prove to his colleagues that he was a grown, responsible adult more than capable of protecting innocents and fighting evil and bedding attractive women, because those were the types of things grown, responsible adults did. By the time he matured enough to realize how immature that had made him sound, it was too late to back down; he had a (patently false) rep to protect.)

He stepped into the shower and let the heat and steam wash over him while he stretched. But his cock hardened as the warmth and pressure of the water brought to mind the gentle caresses that had taken away his pain, the kisses that had made him feel wanted and loved.

So he slapped the handle in the opposite direction, but the freezing water and the shivers that accompanied it only served to remind him how Winter had made him shiver last night.

Growling, he turned the water back up again, muttering Hail Marys while he washed himself. The rest of his muscles relaxed, but his incessant boner didn’t budge, and his stomach clenched with a special type of shame — a fornicating, recently deflowered virgin praying to the Blessed Virgin for help to get the woman he’d deflowered out of his mind so his erection would go away.

And it didn’t even work.

_Dios_ , he was so fucked up.

It wasn’t until his phone rang and he heard _Abuela_ ’s slightly muffled Spanish in another message on the machine that his erection finally deflated. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than the Hail Marys, and he felt sick with shame at the thought of returning her call.

But she sounded even more anxious about his safety than she had in the one less than thirty minutes previous, so he quickly toweled off, pulled on a pair of shorts — he refused to talk to her in his underwear — and dialed the restaurant.

 

* * *

  

She answered on the first ring with the restaurant’s standard welcome greeting.

“ _Abuela_ , it’s Carlos —”

“ _¡Gracias a Dios!_ ” He heard a rustling against the phone, and he knew she’d crossed herself. Probably more than once. “Are you all right? Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick,” she said in Spanish.

He responded in English, as he always did. “Tell everyone I’m fine. I’m sorry I worried you. After I left Harry’s last night, I ran into an old friend and we … lost track of time.”

“Was it a lady friend?” _Abuela_ was no fool, and she could go from admonishment to enthusiasm in less than point-five seconds when his love life was involved.

He paused, choosing his words carefully. At her question, the other end of the line had gone abruptly silent, and he knew that she would be filling in the rest of the family on his answer.

“ _Si_ ,” he said. “But —”

“When can we meet her?”

The hushed excitement vibrating in the background was palpable.

In that moment, he wished more than anything that just this once he could tell them what they wanted to hear and not be a massive disappointment. He allowed himself to briefly imagine what it would have been like to introduce them to Molly. She would have charmed their pants off, and she’d have appreciated them because she had a big family, too, and —

He cleared his throat and tried to find the right words to disappoint them yet again.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. I probably won’t be seeing her again.” He lost the valiant struggle to keep his voice steady on the final word.

“Oh, _mijo._ ” Her tender understanding wrapped him in the hug he knew she’d be giving him if he’d been there in person. He closed his eyes and reveled in it. “Are you —”

He summoned his cocky grin. “I’m fine. I’m sorry I worried you. I need to make a couple of calls, and then I’ll be right over, okay?”

“It’s slow today,” she said, which was a lie. Saturday was their busiest day. “If you’d rather stay home, go ahead. I’m sure you’re tired.”

Under any other circumstances, the statement would have been a guilt trip. But right now, he understood it for the one day only, Get Out of Family, Free card that it was.

He suddenly found it difficult to speak, and the line went blurry with static.

But he didn’t have the luxury of wasting a day wallowing. He had people depending on him. And, for the first time in a while, he actually wanted to go to the restaurant. Things were simpler there; he could focus on the easy things, like making enchiladas for table five, and just be normal for a little while.

“I’ll be there in a bit.”

“If that’s what you want. I’m just so relieved you’re okay. I’ll see you when you get here.”

That quirky piano melody rose to a crescendo in his ears, accompanied by an image of his pinky entwined with another, and he spoke before he could think twice.

“Wait, _Abuela_ , I need to tell you something.”

His heart thudded when she paused before saying, “Is everything all right?”

“ _Si_ , but — please don’t get upset.” He took a deep breath. “You know my rosary? The one you kept putting in my pocket?”

“Blessed by the pope?”

A nervous chuckle escaped him. “ _Si_. Well, you know how I have things that help me do magic?”

“ _Si_.” When _Abuela_ wanted to hide what she was thinking, even a Sensitive couldn’t have read her emotions. He heard a tension, a slight uncertainty, but nothing else.

“My rosary is one of those.” The words tumbled from his mouth. Then he added, as succinctly and calmly as he could manage, “Magic is driven by emotion. Items that evoke the strongest emotions are the best for performing magic.”

She was silent for about twelve eternities.

Only by repeating _Inhala, exhala_ in his head was he able to keep himself from throwing the phone out the window and telling her later that it had been Harry Dresden doing a really great impersonation of him, except for the part about the blasphemy.

Finally, she spoke. “Does it keep you safe?”

His mouth was drier than L.A. during a drought. “It’s gotten me out of a few tough scrapes, yeah.”

Another infinite pause, interrupted by a burst of distressingly loud static.

“Then why would I possibly be upset with you?” she asked. “ _Mijo,_ every day I pray for two things: your safety and your happiness. Who am I to judge how God chooses to answer them?”

He sagged; the line blurred and fuzzed and quavered. When it cleared, he said the only thing that came close to encompassing his feelings; something he often felt, sometimes thought, and rarely spoke aloud.

“ _Te quiero mucho, Abuela_.” _I love you very much._

“Oh, Carlito.” _Abuela_ somehow managed to squeeze surprise, flattery, joy, and unconditional love into those two little words. “ _Te quiero tambien_.”

 

* * *

  

Carlos cleared his throat to say goodbye when a voice shouted on the other end of the line. His spine straightened instantly.

“Your father wants to speak with you,” _Abuela_ said.

“I can’t right now,” Carlos said, once again debating throwing the phone out the window. “Tell him I’ll be there in —”

“Dammit, Carlito!” His father’s harsh Spanish contrasted sharply with _Abuela_ ’s gentleness. “We’ve been over this!”

Carlos gritted his teeth reflexively. Only his father could turn his diminutive, affectionate nickname into a derisive admonishment.

“Where the hell have you been? Your mother and _abuela_ were up half the night worrying. How — many — times do we have to go over this? If you’re going to be home late, you call!”

The line crackled dangerously. It was none of their damn business where he was, he wasn’t a teenager with a curfew, he was a grown man with his own life and yes, they’d been over this a million times, but this was the first time in two years he hadn’t called and he really wasn’t in the mood right now to placate everyone’s feelings, so maybe his father should just _back the fuck off._

As Carlos opened his mouth to protest, he heard the words of a Knight in the voice of a Lady.

_How can I fight with you when you’re telling me you love me?_

He hadn’t called. The last time that happened, his family had sat at his bedside for a week until the doctors brought him out of a medically-induced coma.

If the roles had been reversed, Carlos would have inadvertently knocked out the power to several city blocks. And then advertently done damage to several more.

“ _Lo siento, Papa_ ,” he said softly. _I’m sorry_. Then, in English, “You’re right. I should have called. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

His father stopped in his verbal tracks for barely a nanosecond. “I’m not the one you should apologize to. Your mother and _abuela_ were worried sick.”

Although — or perhaps because — Carlos doubted the completeness of that statement, he said, without a trace of irony or sarcasm or anything that might have been misconstrued as disrespect, “I know. And I will. I’m okay. I lost track of time and forgot to call, but that’s no excuse. It won’t happen again.”

A longer pause this time. “Good, then.”

Carlos couldn’t tell if his father was annoyed or relieved that his rant had been cut short, but he didn’t have long to think about it.

“So what’s this I hear about a girl?” His father sounded vaguely amused in the most insulting way possible.

Ungritting his teeth, Carlos forced his voice into faux-coolness and said, “Just an old friend. We talked and it got late, so I stayed over.”

“Did you get laid?”

Carlos nearly dropped the phone. The two of them never talked about sex, not even during puberty (his sister Maria had given him the sex talk). His father always just assumed and made snide remarks. Carlos briefly considered several responses that might convincingly explain that he was no longer a thirty-year-old virgin, before deciding he was too tired to play games.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I said yes.” The words came out much more bitter than he intended.

“Then why would I ask?” A deep sigh, and Carlos wondered if these conversations were just as stressful for his father as they were for him. “You’re not a liar.”

Carlos winced at that. He actually lied all the time about his sexual experience, but technically not to his family, so win?

“The girls all lied,” his father said. “But you’ve always been too honorable for that.”

Carlos’s breath caught in his throat. The word had just rolled off his father’s tongue like it was a well-known fact — the sky is blue, _Abuela_ makes the best _sopapillas_ , Carlos is honorable.

Honorable was one thing Carlos had always striven to be. And always feared he would never achieve.

“ _Si_ ,” he said thickly. The line fuzzed. “I — I did. Uh, get —”

“Good. Feel better?”

_Dios_ , what the hell kind of question was that? Was his sexual frustration that obvious?

“Yeah.” Not entirely true, but that didn’t have to do with the sex. Just the aftermath.

“Good. Now get your ass over here. It’s Saturday.”

“I have some calls to make. Give me a couple hours?”

“One.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carlos stared at the receiver long after his father had hung up, until the phone started to beep angrily at him.

 

* * *

 

As Regional Commander of Wardens in the Western United States, Carlos received a lot of calls.

A _lot_ of calls.

Since he was constantly out on Warden business, he was rarely around to receive them.

That’s what his ancient answering machine was for. Carlos ran his hand along the behemoth, and for the first time in a several years — it was far too painful a subject to dwell upon more often than that — he allowed himself to think about the man from whom he’d inherited it.

At nearly three centuries old, Raul had had no living relatives left at the time of his death. But many of his recent apprentices — at least, those who hadn’t been inspired by him to become Wardens and then gotten themselves slaughtered by the Red Court — were still around, and they’d kindly offered to help a guilty, grieving, green regional commander clean out his dead mentor’s house. They’d insisted that Carlos take the machine, assuring him that Raul would have wanted it to “stay with the position.” Carlos had almost snapped back that Raul would much rather have wanted to be alive, but he’d been too exhausted, numb, and in residual pain from his injuries on Halloween — not to mention tormented by his last words to Raul — to do anything but nod.

The old piece of shit machine with its big, dumb buttons the size of the black keys on a piano blurred in front of him, and an uncomfortable pressure grew in his chest. What would Raul think of him now? Would he have been disappointed that Carlos had been so easily knocked out of commission for eight months? Would he have been ashamed that his once-promising apprentice had lost the city they both loved to the Fomor? Or would he have been a calm, understanding presence and offered words of encouragement? Carlos would have given anything for one last conversation with his mentor. To apologize and beg for forgiveness.

_Madre de Dios_ , last night must have really screwed him up if he was getting all maudlin over a fucking answering machine. He wiped his face roughly and jabbed the play button. The cassette rewound, as loud and obnoxious as usual. He wasn’t afraid of breaking it; in ten years, the thing had survived the intense array of emotions Carlos had thrown at it with only the slightest distortions at certain parts of the tape, plus whatever Raul had done to it when it was somewhat less ancient. Neither of them were as powerful as Harry Dresden, who always swore that nothing made after 1945 would work for him.

He glanced at the analog counter before moving away to get dressed. Thirteen new messages in less than eighteen hours — this was why he never took nights off, and probably wouldn’t again for a while.

Half of the first seven were from _Abuela_ , her anxiety steadily increasing with each message. Interspersed between them were messages from his Wardens, checking in with him as they always did on Friday nights. All was well in Alaska and Hawaii. Since Wild Bill had some difficulty with regionally commanding his people, the Captain wanted him to report to someone, so Carlos it was. Things were quiet in Texas for now, but Meyers echoed Carlos’s own thoughts that this was just the calm before the storm — though what storm, they could only guess.

Unfortunately, things weren’t so great in Denver. Warden Palmer hadn’t had his cloak for a full year yet and insisted on addressing Carlos as _Commander_ and _Sir_ no matter how many times Carlos explained it was unnecessary and also made him feel old. Palmer nervously explained that the Fomor were moving, and he needed back-up. He must have been the one who’d left the urgent message at the restaurant.

Fuck. There was the storm. So much for a leisurely Saturday waiting tables, manning the grill, and navigating intrusive yet endearing personal questions.

With a sigh that seemed to come from deep inside his soul, Carlos started to lay out his gear.

There was a message from Elaine Mallory, informing him that she’d run into “an actual be-tentacled, creepy-ass Fomor” in Beverly Hills last night. Since that area was usually protected by the White Court, the news was disconcerting. Fortunately, she’d gotten “lucky” and killed it. Carlos frowned; Elaine Mallory got lucky a lot these days. There was something about her that just didn’t add up, but he didn’t have time to figure her out right now.

_“Oh, and, let’s see,”_ she finished, an audible smile in her voice. _“No, I won’t go on a date with you, yes, I understand how attractive you are and yes, I’m sure you’re in very high demand these days, but you’re still too young and still not my type. I think I got them all, but if I missed one, I’m sure you’ll let me know.”_

In spite of everything weighing on him, he almost smiled. The first time they’d met, years ago, he’d been so struck by her confidence and humor that he’d asked her out before his brain had time to veto the plan. Although she’d said no, her face had brightened, and she’d left with a smile on her face. He didn’t know her story, but she always seemed so sad that he’d asked her again the next time he saw her, just to see if it would cheer her up again. It did, and it became a little game — he asked her out, she politely refused, he waxed philosophical about his awesomeness, she grinned at his obviously false bravado. Apparently the game worked both ways, if his own slightly lightened heart was anything to go by.

_“Carlos Mateo Roberto Juan Rogelio Ramirez!”_

Carlos nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden volume of his older sister Maria’s rapid, ear-piercing Spanish, wincing at the bolt of pain that shot up his back. Only one of those was his actual middle name; she added more the angrier she got. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her use three extra names before.

But he was pretty sure he knew what this was about — he’d been wondering when she’d call.

_“This afternoon I had lunch with Sara. I asked her how your date went last week, and she said that you were sweet, but the two of you didn’t hit it off because she just wasn’t that into magic!”_

Carlos snorted, snapping a magazine into his Desert Eagle. That had been a fun night — well, fun _ny_.

_“I thought I must have misheard her, but she told me that you spent the entire dinner doing fucking card tricks. Card tricks, Carlos! Why do I bother setting you up on these dates if you’re just going to sabotage them? You’ve worked your way through most of my acquaintances and several of my friends now. They could form a club!”_

Maybe she should take a hint, then.

_“I’m trying to help you,_ hermanito _. I know your job is difficult, but you don’t have any sort of life outside work.”_ To Carlos’s immense horror, Maria started to cry. _“I know you’re going to outlive us all by a long time, and when I think of you growing old alone, it breaks my heart. I’m just trying to help.”_ She groaned. _“I’m sorry, stupid hormones. It wasn’t this bad with the girls. I just want —”_

The machine cut her off with a loud click, whirring loudly as it advanced to the next message. Carlos carefully pushed aside his gear, sat down on the bed, and buried his face in his hands.

Maria was the only member of his family who believed in magic and didn’t think he was nuts or a Satan-worshiper or both. She was also one of the few people who he was honest with about his (lack of) sexual activity; with her he could drop the cocky — heh — facade. He’d thought the dates had been an attempt to get him out more and maybe laid, not some ridiculous match-making scheme. He added her to his rapidly growing mental list of people to have serious conversations with in the near future. Maybe he’d liquor himself up and talk to her about Molly. He needed to talk to someone about her.

_“Dammit, Carlito!”_ Maria shouted into the machine. _“Every time I hear that stupid outgoing message I want to punch you in the face! I know you make the time short on purpose so I have to listen to it more than once, you son of a bitch!”_

Carlos smirked. He was pretty sure that wasn’t even possible on his machine, but he wouldn’t tell her that.

_“I refuse to listen to it a third time, so just suffice it to say that the next time I see you, we’re going to have a talk!”_ A sigh, and her tone softened to the point where she sounded like a different person. _“I love you,_ hermanito. Adios _.”_

With an effort, Carlos heaved himself back to his feet and continued to gather his gear.

 

* * *

  

_“Hola, El Jefe!”_

That was the message he’d been waiting for.

Warden Tanya Bishop of Portland was was the whitest person Carlos knew, but she always insisted on calling him _El Jefe_ , and after most of a decade, he still couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or not.

_“You’ll_ never guess _what happened last night.”_

She paused for a melodramatically appropriate moment, and Carlos used it to wonder what it meant that so many of his acquaintances were drama queens. Maybe it was a wizard thing.

_“Nothing!”_ She gasped exaggeratedly. _“It’s almost as if you can take a night off every once in a while and things won’t go to hell in your absence. I know that’s hard for your big, hetero male ego to take, but the truth hurts sometimes. All’s quiet on the western and northwestern fronts. I swung by the restaurant around closing and your_ abuela _said you weren’t back yet. She also told me I was a sweet girl and asked if I didn’t want to go on a date with you.”_

She cackled into the phone; Carlos pinched the bridge of his nose.

_“Aren’t your sisters popping ‘em out by the thousands? Why’s she so desperate to get you laid?”_

She laughed again, and Carlos felt a little nauseated as his imagination kicked into overdrive at the thought of that conversation.

_“Chill, Ramirez. I promise I was considerably less crass than I was with you when I told her I’m not into boys.”_

Carlos let out a breath. When he’d asked out the funny, vulgar, and hot Tanya Bishop a week into Warden camp, she’d let out her trademark cackle and said, “I like your balls, Ramirez, but you’d have to lose the dick before I’d even consider it.” Her crassness had turned his embarrassment into a genuine laugh, and they’d been good friends ever since. He wondered what it said about him that so many of the women he worked with on a regular basis had rejected him romantically.

_“Anyway, since you weren’t back I patrolled the rest of the night. It’s about six now and I just got home. Hope you’re having a blast getting hammered in Chi-town and not, you know, bleeding out in a warehouse somewhere.”_ An uncharacteristically anxious pause. _“Just let me know when you get back so I know you’re not dead, okay? I don’t want to be promoted to your shit job. Chastity is so not for me.”_

Carlos rolled his eyes. Tanya swore she’d been able to “smell the virgin” on him from the beginning, but she’d never outed him. She usually just made fun, which actually made it easier to confide in her — not everything, but enough that she was the closest thing he had to a best friend who wasn’t also related to him.

_“Anyway, I’m gonna hit the sack. We should get a beer this week. I’ll buy if you tell me what Dresden’s like now that he’s Mab’s bitch._ Adios _, Los_!”

She loved signing off that way because it rhymed and was Spanish and annoyed the hell out of him. But this time its familiarity was comforting; he actually found himself smiling. He’d find time some night this week to head to Portland, get drunk, and vent to her about Molly. She’d bitched to him about all her shitty relationships lately, and if anyone could understand the pressures he was under, it was her.

He stopped the tape before it replayed _Abuela_ ’s last two messages. Then he dialed Warden Palmer to see if things had changed.

It took several agonizing minutes — and enough _Sir_ s and _Commander_ s that Carlos wanted to punch something — to finally suss out that during the night, the Fomor had taken several kids under the age of ten. Carlos took a deep breath, remembered how nervous he was when he’d been appointed regional commander, reminded himself that getting annoyed or angry would only make things worse, and calmly told Palmer he was on his way, and he’d be bringing back-up.

He made a couple more calls. Tanya resumed consciousness just long enough to curse him out for dragging her down there and to swear she wouldn’t be bribed again, signing off with a barely coherent, “Glad you’re not dead.”

“Love you, too, T,” he responded with a grin.

Meyers jumped at the chance to head off the storm and kick some Fomor ass. Denver was fairly free of Fomor, and they intended to keep it that way.

It was time for the Wardens to show the froggy bastards that the western U.S. was protected.

Carlos suited up — kevlar (to stop bullets), chain mail (to stop knives, a gift from Karrin after he’d learned the hard way that kevlar wouldn’t, heh, cut it), tight black t-shirt (to stop hearts), grey Warden cloak (to stop blood, at least from the outside in). Then he put on his grenade-laden web belt, sword on his left hip, Desert Eagle on the right, White Court-commissioned knives in his boots (to stop bad guys).

He’d swing by the restaurant to let them know he was leaving. He hated to disappoint them, especially after that practically genial conversation with his father; maybe he’d make it up to him by offering to help close some night this week.

Right now, he needed to go kick some Fomor ass, save some kids, and — assuming he survived — drunkenly vent to Maria and Tanya about his miserable, pathetic broken heart.

He cast one final look over at his bedside table before closing and locking the door behind him.

 

* * *

  

Not five seconds later, the door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall and closed again with a bang. Carlos crossed the room in three strides and snatched up the card.

What he really needed was to get the rejection out of the way, and _then_ take out his angst by kicking some Fomor ass, saving some kids, and drunkenly venting to Maria and Tanya.

A glacier large enough to sink the Titanic settled in the pit of his stomach. _Inhala, exhala._ He opened the card and skipped to where he’d left off.

 

> _But — and Carlos, I know you want to, but please don’t stop reading._

 

A laugh burst out of him. How was it possible for her to know him well enough after a single night to predict that? But it was her next sentence that made his heart thunder in his ears. The glacier evaporated, and what was left fused and flickered to life.

 

> _It’s important that you finish because it’s not what you think._
> 
> _I’m afraid, Carlos. I know that no matter what I do, no matter how much I care for you, I’m going to hurt you. It’s just a matter of time and extent. If I stop this now, I’ll break your heart. But if I try to make something work, I’ll only be breaking it later, and into infinitely more pieces._

 

Dammit, he knew she was right, but the stupid romantic in him wanted to throw caution to the wind, get down on his knees, and tell her that he didn’t care if they had a day or a week or a century, that it would be better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Why hadn’t she woken him up so he could do that?

 

> _I know what you’re thinking. That you don’t care about any of that because you want to be with me, even if it’s only for a little while. I love you for thinking that, and I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t say that the idea was tempting._

 

The tiny star inside him brightened and warmed until it twinkled. That was enough. She loved him — the real him — just for being himself. No matter what came next, at least he’d have that.  

 

> _But I can’t forget what almost happened. I could have hurt you far worse than a few bruises. It pains me to think about what I might have done, or could do to you if I ever lost control again._
> 
> _And yet, last night was the most human I’ve felt in a long time. Everyone treats me differently now except for my family, and that’s only because they don’t know. But you know what I am, and you still wanted me. Molly, not the Winter Lady. Not only did you want me, but you risked your own well-being to find me and bring me back when I got lost in Winter. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be me, but I can’t help but feel that however long it is, it will be longer if I’m with you._
> 
> _And then I remember what Karrin said about making time. Molly Carpenter is dying. She doesn’t have much time left. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want to have any regrets about last night. I’m looking at you now, peaceful and asleep, and just thinking of leaving makes my heart ache. I want to be Molly for as long as I can, and I want to be Molly with you._
> 
> _Mab’s getting annoyed now, so I have to go, but I have a proposal for you: how about dinner Friday night? I’ll pick you up at seven. Then we can talk and make a decision together, and see where things go from there. Call me on my cell to confirm, or if you just want to talk :)_
> 
> _And I promise that, no matter what, I won’t let you wake up alone again._
> 
> _Love, your amorcita,_
> 
> _Molly_

 

And under her name she’d written a phone number.

Stupefied, he clasped the card to his chest, where the star had twinkled itself into a white hot supergiant. He fell back onto his bed, his entire body numb and useless.

He started to laugh — a low chuckle that slowly morphed into a deep, rich belly laugh.

The bright star in his chest went supernova.

He punched the air as if it had said something terrible about his _abuela_ , laughing and grinning until his sides and cheeks ached. He did a weird little dance, laying right there on his bed, feeling feverish as the warmth in his chest spread to every one of his extremities.

The warmth of Winter.

He rolled onto his stomach and read her card again. And again. And again. And every time he kicked himself for stopping right before her warning. He was such a fucking drama queen. His grin widened with every read-through, and he started to worry that it might get stuck that way.

And then he decided that wasn’t anything to worry about at all.

It wasn’t until he’d read it a dozen times that he noticed a final note on the back of the card, hastily scribbled with what he recognized as the crappy pen he kept next to the phone to take messages.

 

> _P.S. I just kissed you goodbye. Without waking up, you kissed me back, smiled, and murmured, “Molly.” And now I’m crying and cursing Mab for calling me away. Remind me to punch you the next time I see you, bastard._

In spite of the invective, he grinned and touched his fingers to his lips, like the lovesick idiot he was. He wished he’d been awake when she’d kissed him goodbye, but a date on Friday night would have to do.

 

* * *

  

He lay there on his stomach, ignoring the discomfort — and, frankly, danger — of laying on his grenades, pistol, and sword, his legs kicking in the air like a teenage girl, until his phone’s shrill ring snapped him back to attention.

Right. He had to get to Albuquerque.

Still clutching the card in his hand, he snatched up the phone.

“I’m coming, _Abuela_ ,” he said with an enormous grin. “And I have good news. You know that girl I told you about?”

“You talk to your _abuela_ about girls?” said a snarky, unimpressed voice. “That’s adorable.”

“Harry Fucking Dresden,” he said cheerfully — nothing could dampen his mood right now. “ _¡Buenos dias, mi amigo!_ ”

There was a short pause, during which he imagined Dresden’s mouth opening and closing wordlessly. That only served to improve his mood.

“You’d be surprised how many people have called me that,” Harry said.

“I actually don’t think I would,” said Carlos. “What can I do for you this fine morning?”

Harry still sounded a little off-balance, but he managed to summon from his infinite supply of snark. “I was awakened this morning by, not one, but two panicked phone calls from your _abuela_. I told her I had not, in fact, heard from you since last night, and certainly not in the thirty minutes since her previous call. But she could not be pacified.”

Harry’s subtle but unmistakable acidity dumped a bucket of ice water on Carlos’s cheer. Their conversations were like a fencing match, and every parried strike was a code containing information neither would ever say aloud. It could be exhausting at times — at least all the women in his life, though incessant, told them exactly how they felt.

He ran through Harry’s soul in his mind; it always held the key to cracking the cranky wizard’s code. When he came to the saddest part, the lonely solo horn, he translated Harry’s remark.

_I’m snarking about your grandmother because she obviously cares about you, and I don’t have family who love me like that._

Carlos’s heart ached, as it always did when he translated the harshest of Harry’s sarcasm. People almost never understood that the snark always came from — and attempted to cover up — a deep source of pain.

So he forced a smile, thought of _Abuela_ , and said, “Sorry she bothered you. I try to tell her I’m a big boy, but she worries, especially since my injury.”

Translation: _Lay off. Your jealousy is no reason to be a jackass._

“You did call her, didn’t you?” Harry said. “She seemed ready to track you down and kick some supernatural ass to do it. She probably could, too.”

Translation: _Sorry. That was out of line. You’re lucky to have someone who loves you that much._

Huh. Maybe Carlos was better at the art of the guilt trip than he thought.

“Yes, Dad, I did,” Carlos said. _Apology accepted._ “You know, I meant to ask you last night: have you talked to McCoy since you came back from the dead?” _You have people who love you, too._

“Ah, no. Not yet.” _I’m afraid he’ll hate me after everything I’ve done._

“He tried to hide it, but he was pretty broken up when you died.” _He loves you. Don’t be a coward._

“Yeah, I know.” _Yeah, I know._

Carlos barely restrained a sigh. Sometimes Harry needed people to smack him upside the head — metaphorically, but he had his suspicions that Karrin had done it literally a few times — and give it to him straight. No code.

Luckily, Carlos had plenty of practice from all the women in his life.

“ _Dios_ , Dresden. Don’t be such a stubborn asshole. He’s your mentor. When he’s gone, you’ll regret everything you didn’t have the balls to say.”

Silence.

_“If he inspired you to be better,”_ came Molly’s voice, accompanied by her soul’s theme, _“he needs to hear that more than you know.”_

Dammit. He did not want to have this conversation right now — he needed to get to Denver, and he really didn’t want Harry Fucking Dresden to ruin the best morning of his life.

Then again, the morning was already ruined, and on the phone when he was in a fantastic mood and had an excellent excuse to bail if things went south was probably the most perfect moment he was going to get.

_Inhala, exhala._ “My mentor was Raul Santiago. You might have heard of him. He was regional commander of the western U.S. for decades.”

“Name rings a bell.”

Carlos couldn’t translate that. Dresden was unreadable when he wanted to be.

“He patrolled the entire west coast for kids with magical talent. That’s how he found me. As I got older and saw how much he helped people as a Warden, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. When the war broke out, he recommended me to Luccio, and she let him present me with my cloak and sword, which was pretty unusual. We fought side by side in several of the early battles.”

“What happened?” Translation: _I have an idea, but I hope I’m wrong._

“He was injured pretty bad fighting the Outsiders in the vamps’ first big offensive. It wasn’t fatal, but I told him to stop being a hero and go to the hospital to get fixed up. He did. In the Congo.”

Harry sucked in a quiet breath. “The one that was gassed.”

Carlos couldn’t speak. The line filled with static, and an intense nausea threatened to overwhelm him as he wondered, like he always did, if Raul would still be alive if not for him.

“Stars and stones.” Harry’s voice twisted in sympathetic pain. No translation needed. “Morgan told me that when you were promoted to regional commander, you asked to be stationed in L.A.”

“I did.” More static.

Perhaps intentionally, Dresden’s snarky and often asinine remarks always lulled Carlos into forgetting just how intelligent the bastard was. Harry had a remarkable ability to quickly sort and find connections between disparate pieces of information. It was what made him such a great detective.

Carlos wasn’t quite as fast, so he didn’t see the snark barreling down Dresden’s train of thought until it was too late.

“Hell’s bells,” Harry muttered. “You imprinted on me like a baby duckling.”

The comment hit Carlos like a bowling ball to the gut. He should have seen it coming, but Harry’s apparent sympathy and his own guilt had conspired to bring down his guard. His vision blurred, and so did the line, static threatening to overwhelm the connection.

It was with a herculean effort that he pushed aside his betrayal, anger, and any caustic ripostes and said, in a voice that emanated far more calm than he felt, “Listen, there’s a Fomor situation in Denver I need to take care of. I’ll talk to you later, Dresden.”

He moved to hang up when he heard a desperate, “Wait, Ramirez, don’t — Dammit! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuuuuuck_. Harry, you jackass, this is why you don’t have any friends.”

“That’s not true,” Carlos said automatically.

Harry groaned. “Of course you’re still on the line. Ramirez, I …”

But Carlos’s train of thought was faster this time: he heard Molly’s, _“He needs to hear it more than you know,”_ and played Harry’s soul again. This time, the single, lonely horn was nearly drowned out by the cacophony of dissonant harmonies.

Translation: _You shouldn’t be looking up to me._ _I’m not a good guy._

_Dios_ , was that painfully familiar.

Which was how he knew what to say next.

“Next time you talk to McCoy, give him a message for me, will you? Tell him I think he’s a crazy old man, and I refuse to learn his stupid lesson.”

“What lesson?”

“The hardest one to learn, apparently.”

“‘If you can’t learn to control your fire magic, boy, someday you’re gonna get burned’?” Harry said, in a Midwestern drawl. “Or wait, maybe that was just me.”

Carlos chuckled. Banter he could handle. “Pretty sure it was, Mr. I-Burn-Down-Every-Building-I-Enter.”

“Not every building. Just the ones I don’t like. Or that don’t like me. Or whose inhabitants don’t like me. Or —”

“‘You can’t win ‘em all,’” Carlos said. “‘You can’t save everyone.’”

“Yeah,” Harry said softly. “I never liked that one either.”

“Where do you think I learned it?”

The silence that followed was interrupted by several loud crackles of static.

“How do you do it?” Carlos asked. “How does it not eat you up inside?”

Harry let out a long sigh. Or maybe that was just the static.

“I sold my soul to the Queen of Air and Darkness when I realized there was no other way to save my daughter, so … if you figure it out, let me know.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Carlos said, even as he feared it was too late for him, too. He’d already given his heart to the Queen of Air and Darkness’s protege.

The line went so fuzzy that Carlos had difficulty hearing Harry’s words, and he couldn’t tell if the multiple starts and stops were because of the poor connection or something else.

“He —” A loud crackle. Maybe Harry clearing his throat? “Raul would be real proud of you, Carlos. Protecting people. Keeping the bad guys at bay without resorting to — without becoming — without — changing. Without breaking. He — _Raul_ — would be real happy to know that you’re the one fighting the good fight while he’s been gone.”

The line went dead.

 

* * *

  

Carlos placed the phone back on the hook with a shaking hand and sat with his eyes closed for a few minutes, replaying Harry’s words on a loop in his head. Words he hadn’t realized he’d needed to hear from a certain snarky wizard until just now. Words he wanted to commit to memory, into his very soul, so that he’d remember them when he needed them most.

When he’d regained some semblance of control, he went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. By the time he finished and was gathering up his gear, the phone rang again.

“Ramirez.”

“Hey, not sure what happened there,” Harry said with a clearly forced chuckle. “You know how it is. Wizards, technology. Like Jedi and Sith.”

“We’re the Jedi, though, right?” Carlos asked.

“God, I hope so, though I’m still waiting on my lightsaber to come in the mail.”

Carlos grinned. “Speak for yourself, man. I already have a sword that hums with power and slices through anything.”

“Man, why does everyone have a lightsaber but me?” Harry said.

Carlos really didn’t have time to ask what that was about. “Did you need something else?”

“Yeah, actually.” Harry’s voice hardened. “This is a courtesy call to inform you that I’m suing you for patent violations.”

Whatever Carlos had expected, it wasn’t that. “Uh, what?”

“Last night, you came all the way to Chicago to drink and catch up, but you never actually talked about how you were. You just cracked jokes and steered the conversation back to me. And so subtly that I didn’t even realize it until after you left.”

Damn. The man wasn’t the only wizard detective in the phone book — except for Elaine Mallory — for nothing.

“So …?” Carlos said.

“So, I invented that move.”

Carlos snorted. “Please. I have five sisters. I’ve been deflecting personal questions with humor since before I could walk.”

“And I’ve been doing that shit since before you were born, kiddo.”

It was for several reasons that Carlos bit back a comment about Harry’s age and mid-life crises — and changing jobs, and sleeping with, er, _different_ women — the least of which was the fact that forty was hardly mid-life for wizards.

“You’ve been served, punk,” Harry said, and then continued a bit more gently, “And invited out for drinks again next weekend. I’ll come to L.A. and buy, and you can bitch and watch a real pro deflect by cracking jokes at inappropriate times.”

Translation: _Sorry for being a total dickface. I can hardly afford to lose any more friends right now._

Neither could Carlos. “Sounds good. Next Friday?”

“I’ll pencil you in.”

The card Carlos still clutched felt suddenly cold in his hands. “Wait, no, I can’t do Friday. How about Saturday?”

“Saturday works,” Harry said. “Why? Got a hot date?”

Carlos grinned and couldn’t keep from saying, “A cold one, actually.”

The line went utterly silent for a full second, and Carlos thought the call might have dropped again. Then he heard shuffling, a clicking — snapping fingers? — more shuffling, and hushed voices.

After a couple seconds of indecipherable murmuring, he heard a snapped, “Give me the phone, Dresden.”

“No, I’m talking to him!” Then Harry’s voice, at normal volume and much-higher-than-normal teasing tone. “So, Ramirez — Ow!”

A different voice came on the line. “Carlos. This is Karrin Murphy.”

In the background, he heard Harry grumbling, “So unfair …”

“Why, Ms. Murphy,” Carlos said, pasting on his trademark cocky grin. “It’s nice to make your acquaintance. I’m Carlos Ramirez, Regional Commander of —”

“I’m telling you because I want you to carefully consider your answer to the following question.”

Karrin paused for several beats, but not melodramatically. The heavy silence carried a menace and threat across thousands of miles from Chicago to L.A.

He was being interrogated.

Karrin Murphy might not have been a cop anymore, but old habits died hard. He almost started spilling his guts to her right there, and she hadn’t even asked a question yet.

“Did Molly go home with you last night?”

Carlos had been trained to resist interrogations, both mortal and magical, but this was one he didn’t want to resist. He wanted to sing his news from the rooftops at the top of his lungs.

If only she’d ask the right questions.

“Karrin,” he said, dragging out the last syllable chidingly. “It’s awfully sexist of you to assume that we went to the man’s place, especially when the woman has a much nicer apartment right there in Chicago.”

Another tense silence, and a thrill of fear shot through Carlos. Karrin Murphy was head of the B.F.S. for a reason, and it wasn’t because of her charm. Accusing the first female head of C.P.D.’s Special Investigations of sexism was definitely not the smartest thing he’d done today.

But when Karrin spoke, there was a smile in her voice. “You son of a bitch. You actually listened to me. Wizards never take my advice on the first go.”

“I heard that!” came Harry’s muffled voice.

“Wait,” Karrin said, her tone darkening. “If you stayed at her place, why are you at _your_ place this early in the morning? Did you slink out before the crack of dawn?”

Even though he’d done nothing wrong, Carlos nearly shuddered with guilt at the palpable, unspoken threat. But he covered it with a grin, and it was his real one, too.

“Again with the sexism. Is it so unfathomable that the woman got called away by her incredibly demanding boss and made sure the man got home safely so he wouldn’t wake up in a strange place?”

Another beat, another guilt flare-up.

Another audible smile. “Oh yeah, you definitely got laid last night. You’re downright chipper this morning — really chipper, not that fake shit you always try to pull.”

_Dios_ , first his father, now Karrin? Was he really that obvious?

“That’s just some gentle teasing between friends, Carlos. You’re not the only sexually frustrated wizard I deal with on a regular basis.”

“I am sitting right here,” Harry said.

“May I have your permission, Warden Ramirez, to inform Ms. Lara Raith — via proxy, as per tradition — that yet another fine young specimen has escaped her grasp?” Karrin asked. “I do love pissing in her cornflakes whenever possible.”

Carlos snorted. “Sure. That’ll definitely make up for what I got in return for turning her down.”

It was with an effort that he forced Lara Raith’s haunting theme and the sight of her Hunger from his mind.

On the other end of the line, Carlos heard shuffling followed by a door slamming.

“What did you say to him?” asked Karrin. “He just handed me a note that says, ‘Going to see Michael and Charity about Maggie,’ and left.”

Her soberness put his instincts on edge. “Doesn’t he visit her most days?”

“Maggie, yes. Not Michael and Charity,” she said. “The three of us have been trying to convince him to live with Maggie for months now, and he always changes the subject. Now, all of a sudden, he’s going to talk to them? What did you say to him?”

Carlos caressed the snowflake on the front of Molly’s card.

“Oh, you know,” he said. “Guy stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” said Karrin, unconvinced as always. “Well, since he won’t ever say it, at least out loud: Thank you.”

He cleared his throat to speak but found he didn’t have anything to say.

“A cold date on Friday, huh?” Karrin, in her infinite wisdom, knew when to push and when not to.

“Something like that,” he said with his doofy grin.

“About that,” she said, and her voice softened. “If you ever want to talk, I know a thing or two about Winter and how … cold it can be.”

He stared at the card in his hand, Molly’s perfect handwriting on the inside, full of hope and love. The snowflake on the front glittered up at him, as beautiful and intimidating and indifferent as the season it represented.

His stomach fluttered and flipped and twisted and performed all kinds of complicated gymnastics. Thinking about Harry and Karrin’s private relationship was like thinking about Maria and her husband’s relationship — simultaneously adorable and wrong on so many levels. And Karrin’s advice, like Maria’s, would probably turn out to be both exactly what he needed to hear and the last thing he wanted to think about.

“Good to know,” he said. “Listen, as much as I’d love to chat, I’ve got to get going. Duty calls.”

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Fomor are moving in Denver.” He normally wouldn’t have disclosed that type of sensitive information, but Karrin wasn’t just anyone.

“I didn’t know they had a foothold in Denver.”

“They don’t.”

“In that case, give ‘em hell for me. And watch that ass of yours.”

Carlos grinned. “You know I always do,” he said. “And Karrin? Thanks.”

A slight pause. “Any time.”

Carlos returned the receiver to its cradle and continued to grin like a doofus at Molly’s card for several seconds before he shook himself. He had people to see, places to be, bad guys to defeat.

He carefully folded the card and placed it in the secret pocket in his cloak, right next to his rosary.

There was a spring in his step as he left his apartment this time, and he was whistling a very specific soul.

Give them hell and watch his ass? _No hay problema_. He’d been doing that for over a decade and had no intention of stopping any time soon. It was nothing compared to the more challenging and much more important task facing him when he returned.

He had a date Friday night, and he was going to sweep the Winter Lady off her feet.

 

_The End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the end! Phew! Thank you to everyone who just finished/has been/are still/will one day start reading! I know it’s been a while since I started this, and especially since the last chapter, but endings are difficult and stressful. Thank you so much for your patience and encouragement. I love you all!
> 
> Special thanks to:
> 
>   * riversquared, my wonderful friend who first introduced me to Dresden and whose bad day inspired this fic. I know it’s a lot longer than it was supposed to be, but hopefully the first chapter made that one day six months ago a little better :)
>   * shadydave, author of the wonderful Dresden/Welcome to Night Vale crossover fic _[Love is All You Need to Destroy Your Enemies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2207475/chapters/4837680)_ , which is the best version of Carlos Ramirez's voice short of Jim Butcher — and maybe long(?) of Jim Butcher, too. And because I read that and wrote _Cold Nights_ at the same time, my Carlos was subconsciously influenced by shadydave’s, at least in the last few chapters. Any similarities in chapters 1-8 are entirely coincidental/great minds thinking alike. I also shamelessly stole some great phrases and descriptions. (“Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.” -Sam Seaborn, _The West Wing_ ) Thanks, shadydave!
>   * My husband, who is my biggest fan and always reads my fics even when he (probably) doesn’t want to and (mostly) patiently deals with me asking, "What?" whenever he laughs while reading them. I shamelessly stole some of Carlos’s better romantic lines from him, so thanks, babe!
> 

> 
> I apologize for any mistakes in the Spanish, which was gleaned from Google by a white girl who took French in high school.
> 
> [This](http://www.telecom-milestones.com/#!telephone-answrering/cwtj) is what Carlos’s answering machine looks like, in case you were wondering.
> 
> And finally, I submit for your consideration: a new story by Jim Butcher (cleverly) titled _Cold Case_ , to be published on November 1, 2016 in the anthology Shadowed Souls, edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes.
> 
>   * Exhibit A: The summary from Jim Butcher’s [website](http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/side-jobs): “In Molly’s first job as the Winter Lady, she teams up with Ramirez to take on a Lovecraft-esque cult. Takes place shortly after Cold Days.”
>   * Exhibit B: [A bad-ass cover, and a slightly, um, different summary.](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BK0SQF4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1)
> 

> 
> Make of that what you will.


End file.
